Writer: The main thing is that the professor's rucksack and spare pants are safe.Professor: Don't poke your nose into another guy's drawers - if you know what I mean.
Writer: No one in the world has a conception about the Zone, so it'll be a sensation. Television, you lady fans getting hot flashes, people carrying brooms as if they were laurel wreaths. Then our professor appears all in whit and declaims, "Mene, mene. Tekel upharsin." Naturally, everyone gapes and shouts, "Give him the Nobel Prize!"Professor: You bedraggled hack writer. You homegrown psychologist. Fit only to scribble graffiti in lavatories, you talentless clod.Writer: That's feeble stuff. Call that an insult? You don't know how it's done.Professor: All right. Suppose I'm after a Nobel Prize. What are you after? Want to bestow on mankind the pearls of your bought inspiration?Writer: I spit on mankind. In all of mankind, only one man interests me. And that's me. Am I worth anything or am I shit like certain other people?Professor: What if you find out that's indeed what you are?Writer: Know something, Einstein? I don't want to argue with you.Professor: Truth is born in arguments, damn it.
Suppose I return to our godforsaken city a genius. Understand? But a man writes because he's tormented, unsure of himself. He has to keep proving his worth to himself and to others. But if I'm convinced I'm a genius - then why do I need to write?
What I said about going there, it's all a lie. I don't give a damn about inspiration. But how can I put a name to - what it is that I want? How am I to know I don't want what I want or that I really don't want what I don't want? These are intangibles where the moment you name them, their meaning evaporates like jellyfish in the sun.