Obedient to constraint, I was compelled to submit

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.

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.

Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!

"We speak different languages, as usual," responded Woland, "but this does not change the things we speak about. Well?..."

Margarita was never short of money. She could buy whatever she liked. Her husband had plenty of interesting friends. Margarita never had to cook. Margarita knew nothing of the horrors of living in a shared flat. In short... was she happy? Not for a moment.

The darkness that had come in from the Mediterranean covered the city so detested by the procurator.