But try getting blindly carried away by your feelings, without reasoning, without a primary cause, driving consciousness away at least for a time; start hating, or fall in love, only so as not to sit with folded arms.

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

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.

Humiliate the reason and distort the soul.

I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.

And the more I drink the more I feel it. That's why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!