Children's books are written for upbringing...but upbringing is a great thing; it decides the fate of the human being.

In order to have a literature, a nation must live, not merely on the practical, but on the moral and spiritual plane as well, contributing through its national life to the development of some side of the universal spirit of man.

In science one must search for ideas. If there are no ideas, there is no science. A knowledge of facts is only valuable in so far as facts conceal ideas: facts without ideas are just the sweepings of the brain and the memory.

But in this world of morally-warped phenomena there are rare and happy exceptions of truly great magnitude, which always pay dearly for their exclusiveness and fall a prey to their own superiority. Natures of genius, themselves unaware of their genius, they are relentlessly killed by an unconscious society as an expiatory sacrifice to its own sins … Such is Pushkin’s Tatiana.

I am strongly convinced that the people or society is the best and the most unerring critic.

It is apparent at first glance that in The Double there is more creative talent and depth of thought than in Poor Folk. But meanwhile the consensus of St. Petersburg readers is that this novel is intolerably long-winded and therefore terribly boring.

The object of a comedy is not to correct morals or ridicule the vices of society; no, a comedy should depict the discrepancies between life and purpose, should be the fruit of bitter indignation aroused by the degradation of human dignity, should be sarcasm, and not an epigram, convulsive laughter and not an amused grin, should be written with bile and not diluted salt, in a word, it should embrace life in its highest significance.