The more cultured a man, the less fortunate he is.

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

People's destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring—they're all alike, and they're all unhappy. Then there are others, like for instance you—you're one in a million. You're happy—

And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.

It always seems to the brothers and the father that their brother or son didn't marry the right person.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.