Shabelsky: Doctors are the same as lawyers, the sole difference being that lawyers only rob you, but doctors rob you and kill you too...

There is no greater sorrow than to know another's secret when you cannot help them.

Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years

When you want to touch the reader's heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.

We all have too many wheels, screws and valves to judge each other on first impressions or one or two pointers. I don't understand you, you don't understand me and we don't understand ourselves.

They say, tell me what you've read and I'll tell you who you are.

Here I am with you & yet not for a single moment do I forget that there's an unfinished novel waiting for me.

MEDVIEDENKO Why do you always wear mourning? MASHA I dress in black to match my life. I am unhappy.

Do you see that tree? It is dead but it still sways in the wind with the others. I think it would be like that with me. That if I died I would still be part of life in one way or another.

If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.

If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.

"“Nothing forces us to know What we do not want to know Except pain”"

“My will is mine...I shall not make it soft for you.” 

“Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.” 

You must never be fearful of what you are doing when it is right

Have no fear of perfection; you’ll never reach it. 

You’ll never make me believe women were made to walk on stilts. 

“Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.”

You are better off having a friend than to be all alone. If you fall, your friend can help you up. But if you fall without having a friend nearby, you’re really in trouble. 

It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.

First you learn humility, then you experience glory.

"I can't relate to lazy people. We don't speak the same language. I don't understand you. I don't want to understand you.

"The important thing is that your teammates have to know you're pulling for them and you really want them to be successful." 

"When you make a choice and say, 'Come hell or high water, I am going to be this,' then you should not be surprised when you are that. It should not be something that is intoxicating or out of character because you have seen this moment for so long that ... when that moment comes, of course it is here because it has been here the whole time, because it has been [in your mind] the whole time."