Never teach anyone how to live is the main covenant. Everyone is entitled to their own point of view. If only because he lives his own, separate life, with his own unique experience.
“I can’t stand it when my own, personal experience is elevated to an absolute, equated to the norm. Everyone has their own experience, because each of us has his own degree of sensitivity. Someone can live up to 90 years and not understand, not feel anything. And someone even at the age of ten has the emotional experience of an adult. The thinness of the skin and the sensitivity of the nerves are the main criteria for me. Therefore, I try not to teach anyone how to live. And I protect myself from teachings, because they are only shaking the air.
* Ostap Bender, the hero of Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov’s poignantly satirical novel The Twelve Chairs (1927).