The Task Of A Writer Is Not

The Leaves Did Not Stir On The Trees, Grasshoppers Chirruped, And The Monotonous Hollow Sound Of The Sea Rising Up From Below, Spoke Of The Peace, Of The Eternal Sleep Awaiting Us. So It Must Have Sounded When There Was No Yalta, No Oreanda Here; So It Sounds Now, And It Will Sound As Indifferently And Monotonously When We Are All No More. And In This Constancy, In This Complete Indifference To The Life And Death Of Each Of Us, There Lies Hid, Perhaps, A Pledge Of Our Eternal Salvation, Of The Unceasing Movement Of Life Upon Earth, Of Unceasing Progress Towards Perfection.

Useless Pursuits And Conversations Always About The Same Things Absorb The Better Part Of One's Time, The Better Part Of One's Strength, And In The End There Is Left A Life Grovelling And Curtailed, Worthless And Trivial, And There Is No Escaping Or Getting Away From It—just As Though One Were In A Madhouse Or Prison.

Capital Punishment Kills Immediately, Whereas Lifetime Imprisonment Does So Slowly. Which Executioner Is More Humane? The One Who Kills You In A Few Minutes, Or The One Who Wrests Your Life From You In The Course Of Many Years?

Try To Reason About Love, And You Will Lose Your Reason.

My Business Is To Be Talented, That Is, To Be Capable Of Selecting The Important Moments From The Trivial Ones. . . . It's About Time For Writers - Particularly Those Who Are Genuine Artists - To Recognize That In This World You Cannot Figure Out Everything. Just Have A Writer Who The Crowds Trust Be Courageous Enough And Declare That He Does Not Understand Everything, And That Alone Will Represent A Major Contribution To The Way People Think, A Long Leap Forward.