A writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laborious.

Please, understand that your life is bad and dreary!

I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view - I change it every month - and so I'll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.

I don't like being successful; the subjects which sit in my head are annoyed and jealous of what has already been written.

Anna Petrovna: Never talk to women about your own good qualities. Let them find out for themselves.

Even in Siberia there is happiness.

Oh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground.