Processing the human raw material is naturally more complicated than processing lumber. - Maxim Gorky

One has to be able to count, if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty.

It is quiet and peaceful here, the air is good, there are numerous gardens, and in them nightingales sing and spies lurk under the bushes.

There's a little book I'm thinking of writing — "Swan Song" is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence.