I feel more confident and more satisfied when I reflect that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the other. Though it’s disorderly, it’s not so dull, and besides, neither really loses anything through my infidelity.

I’m a seagull. No, that’s wrong. Remember you shot a seagull? A man happened to come along, saw it and killed it, just to pass the time.

I’m in mourning for my life, I’m unhappy.

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.