“The darkness that had come in from the Mediterranean covered the city so detested by the procurator...”

“Procurator obserwował przybysza oczami chciwymi i nieco wystraszonymi. Tak się patrzy na kogoś, o kim wiele się słyszało, o kim wiele się rozmyślało, gdy ten ktoś wreszcie się zjawia.”

“Most bad," the host concluded. "If you ask me, something sinister lurks in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, and dinnertime conversation. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly detest everyone around them.”

“Man is mortal, and as the professor so rightly said mortality can come so suddenly”

“The cat, covered in dust and standing on its hind legs, bowed to Margarita. Round its neck it was now wearing a made-up white bow tie on an elastic band, with a pair of ladies’ mother-of-pearl binoculars hanging on a cord. It had also gilded its whiskers.”

“he was coming to understand he could not come to rectify anything in his life, only forget.”

“The most uncomplicated thing of all!’ he replied. ’For someone well acquainted with the fifth dimension, it costs nothing to expand space to the desired proportions. I’ll say more, respected lady - to devil knows what proportions! I, however,’ Koroviev went on chattering, ‘have known people who had no idea, not only of the fifth dimension, but generally of anything at all, and who nevertheless performed absolute wonders in expanding their space. Thus, for instance, one city-dweller, as I’ve been told, having obtained a three-room apartment on Zemlyanoy Val, transformed it instantly, without any fifth dimension or other things that addle the brain, into a four-room apartment by dividing one room in half with a partition.”