The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Bulgakov

“Please, excuse me,” he said, speaking correctly, but with a foreign accent, “for presuming to speak to you without an introduction . . . but the subject of your learned discussion is so interesting that .

You’ve said just what that restless old sage Immanuel said about this very same subject. But here’s the rub: he completely demolished all five proofs, and then, in a seeming display of self-mockery, he constructed a sixth proof all his own!” “Kant’s proof,” retorted the educated editor with a faint smile, “is also unconvincing. No wonder Schiller said that only slaves could be satisfied with Kant’s arguments on this subject, while Strauss simply laughed at his proof.”

“Did he push him?” “What does ‘pushing’ have to do with it,” Ivan exclaimed, furious at how dense everyone was. “Someone like that doesn’t have to push! He can do things that would make your flesh crawl! He knew in advance that Berlioz would fall under a streetcar!”

“they are like people anywhere. They love money, but that has always been true . . . People love money, no matter what it is made of, leather, paper, bronze, or gold. And they are thoughtless . . . but, then again, sometimes mercy enters their hearts . . . they are ordinary people . . . On the whole, they remind me of their predecessors . . . only the housing shortage has had a bad effect on them

Besides, we started spending more time apart than we had before. She began going out for walks. And something strange happened, as had often been the case in my life . . . I suddenly made a friend.

“That made me laugh. Yes, but strictly speaking, what was it about him that made him so appealing to me? The fact is that a man who has no surprises inside, up his sleeve, is uninteresting.