Once upon a time there was a lady. She had no children, and no happiness either. And at first she cried for a long time, but then she became wicked.

This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he went and sold her to a brothel.

I challenge you to a duel!” screamed the cat, sailing over their heads on the swinging chandelier.

What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?

Punch a man on the nose, kick an old man downstairs, shoot somebody or any old thing like that, that’s my job. But argue with women in love—no thank you!

Literature has become my life.

Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other.