"I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it's disorderly it's not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything, through my infidelity."

"Tsars and slaves, the intelligent and the obtuse, publicans and pharisees all have an identical legal and moral right to honor the memory of the deceased as they see fit, without regard for anyone else’s opinion and without the fear of hindering one another."

"I don’t know why one can’t chase two rabbits at the same time, even in the literal sense of those words. If you have the hounds, go ahead and pursue."

"I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles."

"There are people whom even children’s literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon."

"Once you’ve married, be strict but just with your wife, don’t allow her to forget herself, and when a misunderstanding arises, say: “Don’t forget that I made you happy.”"

"Despite your best efforts, you could not invent a better police force for literature than criticism and the author’s own conscience."

"Writers are as jealous as pigeons."

"The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships."

"Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material."

"Oh, what women are here!"

"Tell me, pleez, my sawl, when will I live in human way, that is, to work and not to be in need? Now I work, and I'm in need, and I spoil my reputation by the need to write bullshit."

"In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expanses are so great that the little man hasn’t the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides."

"Happiness does not await us all. One needn’t be a prophet to say that there will be more grief and pain than serenity and money. That is why we must hang on to one another."

"Hypocrisy is a revolting, psychopathic state."

"One must speak about serious things seriously."

"I would like to be a free artist and nothing else, and I regret God has not given me the strength to be one."

"My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist."

"Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds."

"There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked."

"An artist must pass judgment only on what he understands; his range is limited as that of any other specialist—that's what I keep repeating and insisting upon. Anyone who says that the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imagery. An artist observes, selects, guesses and synthesizes."

"It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesn’t understand."

"I have in my head a whole army of people pleading to be let out and awaiting my commands."

"I don’t care for success. The ideas sitting in my head are annoyed by, and envious of, that which I’ve already written."

"That can not possibly be, because it could never possibly be."

"Love is a scandal of the personal sort."

"Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress."

"Everything is good in due measure and strong sensations know not measure."

"When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself."

"Brevity is the sister of talent."

"When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is."

"Beware of exquisite language. The language should be simple and elegant."

"Eyes—the head’s chief of police. They watch and make mental notes. A blind person is like a city abandoned by the authorities. On sad days they cry. In these carefree times they weep only from tender emotions."

"If only one tooth aches, rejoice that not all of them ache.... If your wife betrays you, be glad that she betrayed only you and not the nation."

"I drank so much in Peter that Russia should be proud of me!"

"In general, Russia suffers from a frightening poverty in the sphere of facts and a frightening wealth of all types of arguments."

"Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf."

"One can only call that youth healthful which refuses to be reconciled to old ways and which, foolishly or shrewdly, combats the old. This is nature’s charge and all progress hinges upon it."

"We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating."

"I think that it would be less difficult to live eternally than to be deprived of sleep throughout life."

"Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher’s stone."

"Probably nature itself gave man the ability to lie so that in difficult and tense moments he could protect his nest, just as do the vixen and wild duck."

"It’s even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday."

"Can words such as Orthodox, Jew, or Catholic really express some sort of exclusive personal virtues or merits?"

"People understand God as the expression of the most lofty morality. Maybe He needs only perfect people."

"The wealthy man is not he who has money, but he who has the means to live in the luxurious state of early spring."

"Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals render the goals themselves despicable."

"The more elevated a culture, the richer its language. The number of words and their combinations depends directly on a sum of conceptions and ideas; without the latter there can be no understandings, no definitions, and, as a result, no reason to enrich a language."

"A fiancé is neither this nor that: he’s left one shore, but not yet reached the other."

"We old bachelors smell like dogs, do we? So be it. But I must take issue with your claim that doctors who treat female illnesses are womanizers and cynics at heart. Gynecologists deal with savage prose the likes of which you have never dreamed of."