After the doctor's departure Koznyshev felt inclined to go to the river with his fishing rod. He was fond of angling, and seemed proud of being able to like such a stupid occupation.

… for nightinggales - we know - can’t live on fairytales.

Life is fragile and absurd.

The artist's mission must not be to produce an irrefutable solution to a problem, but to compel us to love life in all its countless and inexhaustible manifestations.

Woman is more impressionable than man. Therefore in the Golden Age they were better than men. Now they are worse.

And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.

I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.