As before the collapse, the setting sun brushed the tiles, brought out the warm brown glow on the wallpaper, and hung the shadow of the birch on the wall as if it were a woman's scarf.

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.

To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?

I'm as cruel as life. As cruel as love.

Never allow others to create your world because if you do, they will always make it too small.

True beauty in a woman is reflected in the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows.

We can only go to the limits of ourselves. Anything more and we give too much away. Then we're not good for anyone.

The way I look at it, I'm a guy who acts to live.

To be an artist you have to be as much a businessman to succeed, you have to spend an equal amount of time doing business as you spend doing your craft.

If you break a discipline once, the next transgression becomes much easier.

We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.

I've never seen black men with fine white women. They be ugly. Mugly dogs.