Book: The thirteenth tale. Page 1

A vigorous sprawling handwriting on the paper was written: "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The stories about Sherlock Holmes. Ten pages twice a day until the end of the course."

If you dazzle a man with your gaze of bright green eyes, it is easy to succumb to the hypnosis and will never guess that these eyes closely watching his every action.

Of course to be polite it is easy - it is not necessary to have any special talents. On the other hand, politeness is the last refuge of those who have failed in everything else. Ambitious people who chose a goal and has the strength to achieve it, should not care about what people think about him around. I can't imagine that Wagner lost sleep worrying about someone's offended feelings. He was a genius, and that's it.

And every day I discovered something I read a few lines or pages, allowing forgotten voices of the dead sound in my head. Did they feel, these dead writers, that someone reads their books? Were you a thin ray of light in the supernatural darkness? You feel immortal soul contact with the mind of the reader? I hope so. After all, it must be so lonely being dead.

Do you know why my books are so successful?
- For many reasons, I suppose.
- That's it. But primarily because they have the eyeballs, development of the plot and the ending, in that sequence. Of course, all stories have exposition, development and ending, but they do not always follow each other in sequence. The correct order is all that matters. That's what readers love my books.

The rule of three... the Magic number. Three tests that must pass Prince to win the hand of Princess. Three wishes granted to the fisherman, a talking fish. Three bears in the fairy tale about Goldilocks. Three little pigs and the wolf.

All my experience, all the events of my life, people I know, all my memories and dreams, all the books I read - all the years have fallen into one compost pile and gradually rotting during, turning into a dark oily organic substance. The process of decay has made it a homogeneous substance; it is not to isolate individual components. Some people call it imagination, but I see it as a big pile of compost. From time to time I take some idea and you put it in the compost and wait. The idea feeds on dark matter, once called life takes the energy out of it and begins to rise. Takes root. Gives shoots. And so on, until one day out of an idea grows short story or novel.

People do not like eyes to blame each other of lying.

The radiant beauty of her eyes did not leave them for such boring trivia as glimpses of the mind.

Reading is unsafe.

"Oh." What a wealth of meanings in a single syllable! Fear. Despair. Regret and resignation. There was relief, but some bleak. And mountain, long and deep.

Art in the completeness and formal perfection is unable to give solace.

... But people often only see what waiting to see. If someone expects to see an empty space, it is usually possible.

And yet we should recognize that the books that I read as an adult, could not match the strength of the impact on my consciousness with those that I read in childhood.