“A woman can become a man’s friend only in the following stages – first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.”

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.

They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.

For God’s sake, have some self-respect and do not run off at the mouth if your brain is out to lunch.

The unhappy are egotistical, base, unjust, cruel, and even less capable of understanding one another than are idiots. Unhappiness does not unite people, but separates them.

I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious.

Everything on earth is beautiful, everything — except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.

Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.

When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won’t intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel.

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.

When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.

The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.

What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won’t seem important at all.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

Just as I shall lie alone in the grave, so, in essence, do I live alone.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

Once you are pregnant, there is no if. That child, though tiny and in an early stage of development, already exists!

Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life.

Before our eyes is fought a battle of symbols, for there can be theatre only from the moment when the impossible really begins and when the poetry that occurs on the stage sustains and superheats the realized symbols.

Singing for stage, if you don’t hear yourself, that’s when you push, and that’s when you can hurt your voice sometimes. So if I can hear myself in my ear, it really helps me to find that balance of how loud I needed to be singing.

I don’t think I write differently when I’m writing a screenplay, as opposed to a stage play or a teleplay. Maybe if I were in a film class and there was time to think about it, we could point out differences.

I began to work the stage and get the audience into it. I also learned how to have fun out there. It is something I will never forget.

Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage.

Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization.