You can be sincere and still be stupid.

Russians alone are able to combine so many opposites in themselves at one and the same time.

An artist must know the reality he is depicting in its minutest detail. In my opinion we have only one shining example of that - Count Leo Tolstoy.

One can tell a child everything, anything. I have often been struck by the fact that parents know their children so little. They should not conceal so much from them. How well even little children understand that their parents conceal things from them, because they consider them too young to understand! Children are capable of giving advice in the most important matters.

I don’t even know what I’m writing, I have no idea, I don’t know anything, and I’m not reading over it, and I’m not correcting my style, and I’m writing just for the sake of writing, just for the sake of writing more to you… My precious, my darling, my dearest!

No, evidently habit means a lot. The devil knows what habit can do to a person.

He does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his heart freely.