Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit. My conscience aches day and night, I feel deeply guilty but I don't understand where I am actually at fault. And add to that my wife's illness, my lack of money, the constant bickering, gossip, unnecessary conversations, that stupid Borkin... My home has become loathsome to me and I find living there worse than torture.

If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.

A woman is fascinated not by art but by the noise made by those in the field.

...and with a burning pain in my heart I realized how unnecessary, how petty, and how deceptive all that had hindered us from loving was. I understood that when you love you must either, in your reasonings about that love, start from what is highest, from what is more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their accepted meaning, or you must not reason at all.

Love is a scandal of the personal sort.

I have the feeling that I've seen everything, but failed to notice the elephants.

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