I do value my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great - ideas, work - it's all dust and ashes.

Here I am alive, and it's not my fault, so I have to try and get by as best I can without hurting anybody until death takes over.

I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven't I?

Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters.

Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people's memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.

'Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings and this commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.