When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole ocean-that is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glasses-that is science.
It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why they use their wealth so poorly, and why they don't just get rid of it when they recognize that it is the cause of their unhappiness.
Time will pass, and we shall go away for ever, and we shall be forgotten, our faces will be forgotten, our voices, and how many there were of us; but our sufferings will pass into joy for those who will live after us, happiness and peace will be established upon earth, and they will remember kindly and bless those who have lived before.
Instructing in cures, therapists always recommend that "each case be individualized." If this advice is followed, one becomes persuaded that those means recommended in textbooks as the best, means perfectly appropriate for the template case, turn out to be completely unsuitable in individual cases.
When you want to touch the reader's heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.
All of life and human relations have become so incomprehensibly complex that, when you think about it, it becomes terrifying and your heart stands still.
I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.
But at the same time, in reality, what a difference there is between the world today, and what it used to be! And with the passage of more time, some two or three hundred years, say, people will look back at our own times with horror, or with sneering laughter, because all of our present day life will appear so clumsy, and burdensome, extraordinarily inept and strange. Yes, certainly, what a life it will be then, what a life!
When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder - that seems to give a kind of background to another's grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold. ... The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make.