The orange sky is rolling across the sky like a severed head, gentle light glimmers in the ravines among the clouds, the banners of the sunset are fluttering above our heads. The stench of yesterday’s blood and slaughtered horses drips into the evening chill.

There is no iron that can enter the human heart with such stupefying effect, as a period placed at just the right moment.

No iron can pierce the human heart as chillingly as a full stop placed at the right time.

Even at the time—twenty years old—I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than to sit at an office desk ten hours a day. There is no particular daring in this vow, but I have not broken it and shall not do so. The wisdom of my grandfathers sat in my head: we are born for the pleasure of work, fighting, love, we are born for that and nothing else. (Guy de Maupassant)

If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.

No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.

A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.