About the book: 2014 / TWO BESTSELLERS IN ONE VOLUME. Personal confession of Faina Ranevskaya, supplemented by a collection of her unknown aphorisms, published for the first time. The best proof is that manuscripts don’t burn. “I haven’t heard nasty things about myself for a long time. I’m losing popularity”; “If you have nothing to repent of, your life has been lived in vain”; “I live with my head held high. How could it be otherwise if you’re up to your neck in shit?”; “If life has turned its way to you, well, give it a kick in the ass!” – that’s what Faina Ranevskaya said. But this book is more than just another collection of witticisms and anecdotes from the honored foul-mouthed woman and people's mocker of the Soviet Union. More than a memoir or an autobiography, which she was going to begin with the phrase: “My father was a poor oil industrialist...” From these pages sounds the tragic voice of a great actress who could only throw off her clown mask in private and whose caustic witticisms always brought LAUGHTER THROUGH TEARS.