Ah, Caviar! I keep on eating it, but can never get my fill. Like olives. It's a lucky thing it's not salty.

I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.

I don’t understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.

Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.

In Russia there is no philosophy, but philosophize everything, even the small fry.

A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does.

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.