Not causing trouble, not touching anything, fixing the primus.

The tongue may hide the truth but the eyes—never!

Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of development may be. That I have maintained, do maintain and always will maintain. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour – white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system.

the hope that there she would manage to regain her happiness made her fearless

It must be added that from his first words the foreigner made a repellent impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked him - that is, not liked but . . . how to put it . . . was interested, or whatever.

The cat, covered in dust and standing on its hind legs, bowed to Margarita. Round its neck it was now wearing a made-up white bow tie on an elastic band, with a pair of ladies’ mother-of-pearl binoculars hanging on a cord. It had also gilded its whiskers.

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.