Author of quotes: Marcel Reich-Ranitsky

Where chance and arbitrariness are added to barbarism and cruelty, the question of meaning and logic becomes divorced and redundant.

I have not yet known a single writer who was not vain and self-centered, unless he was a very bad author.

Mother often said that if her husband made coffins, people would stop dying.

I learned a lot from Böll, including the simple truth that peace or even friendship between an author and a critic can only exist if the critic never writes about the books of this author, and he once and for all comes to terms with this circumstance.

I became closely acquainted with two German writers who often and persistently emphasized their Christianity. But only one of them - Heinrich Böll - convinced me of the seriousness of his faith, of its impeccable honesty.

I have never seriously thought about any serious educational function of literature. The need for an active position is another matter. This means that although writers cannot change anything, they must strive to change for the sake of the quality of their writing.

Then I realized that the main thing in literature. The main thing is that meaning and expression, content and form are not separated from each other.

For the first time, I realized, or maybe only felt that love is a disease that has no limits, that those who are blessed with it find themselves outside themselves, and this leads to a frenzy that stubbornly stands or tries to insist on its own in spite of the whole world. I felt that love is a blessing and curse, mercy and fate. I was struck like lightning by the discovery of the involvement of love and death with each other, the comprehension of the fact that we love because we must die.

If Tolstoy felt an urgent need to speak out, he hired a carriage and ordered to drive himself around the city for an hour. What he absolutely needed to be told, he told - he told the cabby.

What is left of art? This question was posed by Robert Musil and gave a lapidary answer to it: "We remain, having changed."

I began to understand that love is always connected with the need for self-affirmation, that there is no love without gratitude. It should not arise out of gratitude, but it leads to it or fades away.

I suddenly learned that the random representations generated by my fantasy were not at all unusual, that before me there were men who had the idea of mentally undressing a woman.

Long before telephone sex was invented, we became friends on the phone.

The cleaning lady, having worked with us for a short time, left the service, declaring that she could not help in the house, where the wife goes to work every day, and the husband sits at home and reads novels.