How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.

When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder - that seems to give a kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold. ... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make.

No matter how corrupt and unjust a convict may be, he loves fairness more than anything else. If the people placed over him are unfair, from year to year he lapses into an embittered state characterized by an extreme lack of faith.

They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.

Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.

What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.

Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is towrite, and only to write.