story-telling

"Then he said:
“How well the peasants compose stories. Everything is simple, the words few, and a great deal of feeling. Real wisdom uses few words, for instance, ‘God have mercy on us."’
Yet the story is a cruel one."
Gorky on Tolstoy in Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

"How strange that he is so fond of playing cards. He plays seriously, passionately. His hands become nervous when he takes the cards up, exactly as if he were holding live birds instead of inanimate pieces of cardboard."