Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.

One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.

The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection.

It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute, but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer punishment.

There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.

In short stories it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because, because--I don't know why.

Eyes - the head's chief of police. They watch and make mental notes.