"I think the first discovery I made for myself which I didn't necessarily share with my family or my friends, but came upon myself, was Russian literature. I've always felt very much enthralled to writers like Dostoevsky, especially, and Chekhov."

"(Is there a book that you just absolutely couldn't imagine not owning, whether or not you think you're ever going to go back and reread it?) LE: Yes: the collected stories of Chekhov. That's what I read if I'm disturbed, depressed, or can't get back to sleep. I have Chekhov next to the bed...The humanity, and the clarity, and the sense of acceptance, and I wouldn't really say kindness so much as acceptance in Chekhov's work-I go back to it constantly. The books I take with me on my book tours are always the ones that are sustaining. I take Chekhov, and I often take Middlemarch."

"I want to believe that in his struggle with nature the genius of man has struggled with physical love too, as with an enemy, and that, if he has not conquered it, he has at least succeeded in tangling it in a net-work of illusions of brotherhood and love; and for me, at any rate, it is no longer a simple instinct of my animal nature as with a dog or a toad, but is real love, and every embrace is spiritualised by a pure impulse of the heart and respect for the woman."

"Great Jove angry is no longer Jove."

"There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday."

"Но, я думаю, кто испытал наслаждение творчества, для того уже все другие наслаждения не существуют."

"My mother and father are the only people on the whole planet for whom I will never begrudge a thing. Should I achieve great things, it is the work of their hands; they are splendid people and their absolute love of their children places them above the highest praise. It cloaks all of their shortcomings, shortcomings that may have resulted from a difficult life."

"The sea has neither meaning nor pity."

"I’m in mourning for my life."

"I try to catch every sentence, every word you and I say, and quickly lock all these sentences and words away in my literary storehouse because they might come in handy."

"If I were asked to choose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It’s better to live somehow than not at all."

"Everyone has the same God; only people differ."

"Capital punishment kills immediately, whereas lifetime imprisonment does so slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few minutes, or the one who wrests your life from you in the course of many years?"

"It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution."

"If you can’t distinguish people from lap-dogs, you shouldn’t undertake philanthropic work."

"Do you know when you may concede your insignificance? In front of God or, perhaps, in front of the intellect, beauty, or nature, but not in front of people. Among people, one must be conscious of one’s dignity."

"The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can’t return even if it wants to."

"Do you remember you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it and destroyed it, just to pass the time."

"You ask “What is life?” That is the same as asking “What is a carrot?” A carrot is a carrot and we know nothing more."

"Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is."

"Instructing in cures, therapists always recommend that “each case be individualized.” If this advice is followed, one becomes persuaded that those means recommended in textbooks as the best, means perfectly appropriate for the template case, turn out to be completely unsuitable in individual cases."

"There is not a single criterion which can serve as the measure of the non-existent, of the non-human."

"One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven."

"There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined."

"When a person hasn’t in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog’s bark in every sound."

"A grimy fly can soil the entire wall and a small, dirty little act can ruin the entire proceedings."

"You look at any poetic creature: muslin, ether, demigoddess, millions of delights; then you look into the soul and find the most ordinary crocodile!"

"Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers."

"It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporeal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it."

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

"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."

"Country acquaintances are charming only in the country and only in the summer. In the city in winter they lose half of their appeal."

"And I thought that were we now to obtain political liberty, of which we talk so much, while engaged in biting one another, we should not know what to do with it, we should waste it in accusing one another in the newspapers of being spies and money-grubbers, we should frighten society with the assurance that we have neither men, nor science, nor literature, nothing! Nothing!"

"Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is to write, and only to write."

"The wealthy are always surrounded by hangers-on; science and art are as well."

"It’s not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul."

"Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf."

"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."

"Love is a scandal of the personal sort."

"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.”"

"By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations."

"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."

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

"Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts."

"I myself smoke, but my wife asked me to speak today on the harmfulness of tobacco, so what can I do? If it’s tobacco, then let it be tobacco."

"The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others."

"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."

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