“I imagine that a Frenchman must in the morning rub himself red with eau-de-Cologne, drink his coffee, and sit down quietly to work.
“I always write in the morning. I was pleased to hear lately that Rousseau too, after he got up in the morning, went for a short walk and sat down to work. In the morning one’s head is particularly fresh. The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking, while still in bed or during the walk. Many writers work at night. Dostoevsky always wrote at night. In a writer there must always be two people—the writer and the critic. And, if one works at night, with a cigarette in one’s mouth, although the work of creation goes on briskly, the critic is for the most part in abeyance, and this is very dangerous.”
Tolstoi often says that he cannot find a suitable definition of music.
Once in the spring he said:
“Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.”
Once, a long time ago, Tolstoi said:
“Life is the present. All that a man has felt remains with him as a memory. We always live by memories. I often feel more strongly not what I have actually felt, but what I have written and felt in describing my characters. They too have become my memories, as if they had been actual experiences.”
The other day the talk was on the same lines.
Tolstoi said: