All human beings hang by a thread, an abyss may open under their feet at any moment, and yet they have to go and invent all sortsof difficulties for themselves and spoil their lives.

I never started from ideas but always from character.

We’re young, we’re not monsters, no fools: we’ll conquer happiness for ourselves.

That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.

It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.

To tell about a drunken muzhik's beating his wife is incomparably harder than to compose a whole tract about the 'woman question.'

Belonging to oneself--the whole essence of life lies in that.