“Sibyl, what do you want?I want to live, the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world a...”

“For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because ...”

“War is not for winning, Masha," sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. "It is for surviving.”

“Their happiness was the kind which is fashioned of the comfortable disorder of sauvignon bottles and coffee cups in the sink, paperback thrillers with split spines on the nightstand, bathrobes hung...”

“Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.”

“You will live as you live in any world,' Madame Lebedeva said. She reached out her hand as if to grasp Marya's, as if to press it to her cheek, then closed her fingers, as if Marya's hand were in h...”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defec...”

“One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.”

“Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true...”

“Semua orang pernah patah hati. All you have to do is move on.”

“A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.”

“If you only write when youre inspired you may be a fairly decent poet, but youll never be a novelist because youre going to have to make your word count today and those words arent going to wait fo...”