What is all this? Get him out of here, devil take me!” And that one, imagine, smiles and says: “Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!” And—bang!

Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.

Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.

You should never ask anyone for anything. Never- and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself.

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!

The tongue may hide the truth but the eyes—never!

No one's fate is of any interest to you except your own.

But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.

I don't have any special talents, just an ordinary desire to live like a human being.

Why do smart people exist, if not to figure out convoluted problems?

Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it.

But this dagger – this was her first. Her favorite. The same one that had sliced off the boy’s toe on the beach and sent it rolling through the sand.

Closing one’s eyes when praying doesn’t increase the odds of the prayer being answered. It merely decreases the odds of being distracted.

The train hit her with the sound of a meat-filled hefty bag smacking the pavement, and the effect was much the same, I guess. (Dark City Lights)

It was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.

When one has no form, one can be all forms.

No story is devoid of meaning ... If you know how to look for it.

Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.

The object of pure Mathematic (is) that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence.

I make napkins talk in restaurants, socks talk on car journeys. There is an awful lot of puppetry going on in the house.

It is difficult to keep quiet when everything is being done wrong, but the less you lose your temper the greater your advantage. Also then you will not go mad yourself.