“What I'd like is to meet a man I could take off my hat to and say: "Thank you for having got born, and the longer you live the better.”

“If it is true that only misfortune can awaken a man's soul, it is a bitter truth, one that is hard to hear and accept, and it is only natural that many people deny it and say it is better for a man to live on in a trance than to wake up to torture.”

“I do not care to see men better off – but better!”

“You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better.”

“However low he may fall, a man can never deny himself the delight of feeling cleverer, more powerful or even better fed than his companions.”

“This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time!”

“once there was a crow, it flew from the field to the hill, from hedge to hedge, and lived its life. then it died and rotted away. -what's the sense in it? there just ISN'T any!”