Book: Diaries

If you constantly and very persistently reiterate to a person that he is limited and stupid, then if there is a grain of Dostoevism in him, this will incite him to show all his capabilities.

Max's remark about Dostoevsky, that there are too many mentally ill people in his works. Completely wrong. They are not insane.

You never know whether the despair you feel is justified or unjustified.

The beginning of any novel at first seems ridiculous. It seems incredible that this new, not yet formed, extremely sensitive organism could withstand the existing organization of the world, which, like any established organization, strives for isolation.

The close proximity of a life absorbed in earning a living - although internally, as far as possible, indifferent - obscures my horizons, as if I were in a ravine, moreover, with my head down.

The director of the insurance company Progress has always been extremely dissatisfied with his employees. Perhaps every director is dissatisfied with his employees, the difference between employees and directors is too great to be equalized only by the orders of the director and only the obedience of the employees. Only mutual hatred leads to alignment and gives completeness to the whole affair.

Behind Dostoevsky's coffin, the students wanted to carry his shackles. He died in a workers' quarter, on the fourth floor of a tenement building.

The meaninglessness of youth. Fear of youth, fear of meaninglessness, of the senseless flowering of an inhuman life.

Why the Chukchi do not leave their terrible land, in any place they would live better in comparison with their current life and current desires. But they cannot; whatever is possible is happening; only what happens is possible.

I hate meticulous introspection. Psychological interpretations like: yesterday I was so and so, and this is because ... and today I am so and so, and this is because ... All this is not true.

I am like a sheep lost at night in the mountains, or a sheep running after this sheep.

If I lived alone, maybe someday I really could refuse the service. Married I can never do that.

I hate everything that has nothing to do with literature, I am bored to conduct conversations (even about literature), I am bored to visit, the sorrows and joys of my relatives are deadly boring to me.

All married people (our acquaintances) are happy, I cannot understand this.