Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita was written in the 1930-es, but remained unpublished until 1967. The author died in 1940, unaware that his book would be read by hundreds of millions, translated into all world’s languages, and named one of the best novels of the 20-th century.  Bulgakov started writing it in 1928, but burned the first manuscript in 1930, seeing no future as a writer in the Soviet Union, and then restarted the novel again in 1931. His personal drama was reflected in the book, along with numerous other dramatic and comical topics, drawn so brilliantly that, once having started reading, you cannot take a break and read it to the end.

The book is full of strikingly wise and amazingly precise thoughts. Below are a few phrases which I tried to translate from Russian with minimal loss of meaning, along with a few well-known illustrations of the book.

“What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?”

“Fact is the most stubborn thing in the world.”

“There is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason.”

“…the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.”

“Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.”

― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita