Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is.

Not one of our mortal gauges is suitable for evaluating non-existence, for making judgments about that which is not a person.

I am now and have always been a stranger to the realm of practical matters.

If you can't distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn't undertake philanthropic work.

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.

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.

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.