I wrote five printer’s sheets [of ‘Sevastopol Labors’] a month on a regular basis… I always wrote a clean copy without making any smudges or edits in manuscripts and never asked to rewrite the same thing twice. I find all these practices that lead to countless blots completely ridiculous and preposterous.

The creative mind is any creative person’s manager. It sorts out all the impressions that an artist receives from life. From the depths of memory, it snatches those of them necessary for artistic work. It follows closely the way and the sequence that the work’s main idea is being realized in. Should something unnecessary be found, it is placed back in the memory storehouse to be used for something else. And if something is missing, the mind diligently looks for other suitable options. ˂…˃ The kind of memory that can hold every day of a person’s life with all the people and all their words, with all kinds of clouds in the sky, with all greenery or all snow drifts, with a wolf howling or a chaffinch singing, is the true gift that a fairy must have laid in the cradle.