Under pressure, people admit to murder, setting fire to the village church or robbing a bank, but never to being bores.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When your protagonist bores you, you're in trouble.
Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.
Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything.
Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Even a writer like me, who, in 'The Firebird,' is telling the story of people who've been dead for nearly three centuries, needs to take care. Those people may not be around any longer to tell me what actually happened, but neither are they able to defend themselves against unjust portrayals.
When I'm writing, what I pretend subconsciously is that we're cavemen, we're sitting around the fire, and I'm telling you stories. If I bore you, you're probably going to pick up a big club and hit me over the head.
Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man who sins and contrives presumptuous deeds.
There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.
As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.