The discovery of the North Pole is one of those realities which could not be avoided. It is the wages which human perseverance pays itself when it thinks that something is taking too long. The world needed a discoverer of the North Pole, and in all areas of social activity, merit was less important here than opportunity.

One can translate an editorial but not a poem. For one can go across the border naked but not without one's skin; for, unlike clothes, one cannot get a new skin.

Psychoanalysis: a rabbit that was swallowed by a boa constrictor just wanted to see what it was like in there.

When I take up my pen, nothing can happen to me. Fate, remember that.

There are writers who can express in as little as twenty pages what I occasionally need as many as two for.

Contemporaries live from second hand to mouth.

It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas.