Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.

All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.

A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways-by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov's crime.

I have been writing in spurts, bit by bit. It is incredibly difficult. Everything is corroded, broken, dismantled; everything is covered with hardened layers of accumulated insensitivity, deafness, entrenched routine. It is disgusting.

Failure to love is almost like murder.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.