Writers build castles in the air, the reader lives inside, and the publisher inns the rent.

But I'm not to be caught with such poor bait! I'm a big fish, I am.

Politics is something similar to the lower physiological functions, with the unpleasant difference that political functions are unavoidably carried out in public.

It is quiet here and restful and the air is delicious. There are gardens everywhere and police spies lie in the bushes. There are nightingales in every garden, but police spies only in mine, I think. They sit under my windows in the darkness of the night and try to get a glimpse of how I spread sedition in Russia.

An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form.

This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time!

To speak the truth is the most difficult of all arts, for in its "pure" form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, or nations, truth is almost completely unsuitable for use by the Philistine and is unacceptable to him.