I try not to borrow, first you borrow then you beg.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.

The fact that I am interrupting serious work to answer these questions proves that I am so stupid that I should be penalized severely. I will be. Don't worry.

A writer without a sense of justice or injustice would be better off editing the yearbook for a school for exceptional children.