“Tis time, my friend, ’tis time! For rest the heart is aching; Days follow days in flight, and every day is taking, Fragments of being, while together you and I, Make plans to live. Look, all is dust, and we shall die.”

Ecstasy is a glass full of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth.

Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry.

My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you.

Please, never despise the translator. He’s the mailman of human civilization.

Sad that our finest aspiration, Our freshest dreams and meditations, In swift succession should decay, Like Autumn leaves that rot away.

I’ve lived to bury my desires, And see my dreams corrode with rust; Now all that’s left are fruitless fires That burn my empty heart to dust.

Thank you, darling, for learning to play chess. It is an absolute necessity for any well organized family. (in a letter to his wife)

Don’t be sad, don’t be angry, if life deceives you! Submit to your grief – your time for joy will come, believe me.

I do not like Moscow life. You live here not as you want to live, but as old women want you to.

Mistress-like, its brilliance vain, highly capricious and inane.

With womankind, the less we love them, the easier they become to charm.

Thus people–so it seems to me– Become good friends from sheer ennui.

Moscow, how many strains are fusing in that one sound, for Russian hearts! What store of riches it imparts!

Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths.

Try to be forgotten. Go live in the country. Stay in mourning for two years, then remarry, but choose somebody decent.

If you but knew the flames that burn in me which I attempt to beat down with my reason.

I did ‘Batman v Superman’ for one or two days.

I’m a playmaker, and I’m going to score. At the end of the day, my job is to put the ball in the basket.

If I come to work every day and do my job, work as hard as I can, be a great teammate, the rest of that stuff will take care of itself.

All right, every day ain’t going to be the best day of your life, don’t worry about that. If you stick to it you hold the possibility open that you will have better days.

Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That’s when I will be truly dead – when I exist in no one’s memory.

Christmas Day was special because everybody is watching at home. That’s what I loved about Christmas Day because it shined the spotlight on the Lakers, on our team.

I say I’m Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin all wrapped up into one. If I die early … I’ll be just like those guys.

The only time I ever enjoyed ironing was the day I accidentally got gin in the steam iron.