And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.

You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.

You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.

Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it.

Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.

Men die. It's practically what they're for.

First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour.

In both marriage and war you must cut up the things people say like a cake and eat only what you can stomach.

No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.

I know you loved both he and I, the way a mother can love two sons. And no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough.

It was at thirteen years old that Marya Morevna learned how to keep a secret, and that secrets are jealous things, permitting no fraternization.

Do what you can with all love and passion irrespective of whether it pays you well or not. Joy in the result lives longer than the joy in the reward.

Self-esteem comes from not letting unrelated external occurrences be tied to your own self-worth.

In the cellars of the night, when the mind starts moving around old trunks of bad times, the pain of this and the same of that, the memory of a small boldness is a hand to hold.

The ability to absorb a book and make someone else's words and story your own was exactly was I was doing on stage.

I have always done what I wanted to do.

What is important is to see how we can best lead a meaningful everyday life, how we can bring about peace and harmony in our minds, how we can help contribute to society.

I love books. I read voraciously, and I happened to have been fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time.

We need fair rules of the road, so big corporations can't use their power to gain unfair advantages.

My tears speak for me.

Our relatives form the natural setting of our childhood. We understand ourselves best and are best understood by others through the persons who came nearest to us in our earliest years.