Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Soloviev or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth, and they shun those whose sole concern is not the truth.

He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

An unshared happiness is not happiness.

He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.

No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing.

You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.