Nobody should be whipped. Remember that, once and for all. Neither man nor animal can be influenced by anything but suggestion.

Allow me to inquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?

Literature has become my life.

I wouldn’t like to meet you when you’ve got a revolver,” said Margarita with a coquettish look at Azazello. She had a passion for people who did things well.

Why try to pursue what is completed?

and a fact is the most stubborn thing in the world.

How sad, ye Gods, how sad the world is at evening, how mysterious the mists over the swamps! You will know it when you have wandered astray in those mists, when you have suffered greatly before dying, when you have walked through the world carrying an unbearable burden. You know it two when you are weary and ready to leave this earth without regret; its mists; its swamps and its rivers; ready to give yourself into the arms of death with a light heart, knowing that death alone can comfort you.