“Nonetheless, a question remains before us all the same: what is a novelist to do with ordinary, completely "usual" people, and how can he present them to the reader so as to make them at least somewhat interesting? To bypass them altogether in a story is quite impossible, because ordinary people are constantly and for the most part the necessary links in the chain of everyday events; in bypassing them we would thus violate plausibility. To fill novels with nothing but types or even simply, for the sake of interest, with strange and nonexistent people, would be implausible--and perhaps uninteresting as well.”

“Very often among a certain highly intelligent type of people, quite paradoxical ideas will establish themselves. But they have suffered so much in their lives for these ideas, and have paid so high a price for them that it becomes very painful, indeed almost impossible, for them to part with them.”

“My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.”

“The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen.”

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”

“One can tell a child everything, anything. I have often been struck by the fact that parents know their children so little. They should not conceal so much from them. How well even little children understand that their parents conceal things from them, because they consider them too young to understand! Children are capable of giving advice in the most important matters. How can one deceive these dear little birds, when they look at one so sweetly and confidingly? I call them birds because there is nothing in the world better than birds!”

“Let me tell you, novice, that the absurd is only too necessary on earth. The world stands on absurdities, and perhaps nothing would have come to pass in it without them.”