(to Pechorin): "Mon cher, je haïs les hommes pour ne pas les mépriser car autrement la vie serait une farce trop dégoûtante." ("My friend, I hate people to avoid despising them because otherwise, life would become too disgusting a farce.") Pechorin (replying to Grushnitski): "Mon cher, je méprise les femmes pour ne pas les aimer car autrement la vie serait un mélodrame trop ridicule" ("My friend, I despise women to avoid loving them because otherwise, life would become too ridiculous a melodrama.") "Passions are merely ideas in their initial stage." "I was prepared to love the whole world . . . I learned to hate." "Whether I am a fool or a villain I know not; but this is certain, I am also most deserving of pity – perhaps more so than she. My soul has been spoiled by the world, my imagination is unquiet, my heart insatiate. To me everything is of little moment. I have become as easily accustomed to grief as to joy, and my life grows emptier day by day." "That is just like human beings! They are all alike; though fully aware in advance of all the evil aspects of a deed, they aid and abet and even give their approbation to it when they see there is no other way out—and then they wash their hands of it and turn away with disapproval from him who dared assume the full burden of responsibility. They are all alike, even the kindest and wisest of them!" "Women love only the men they don't know." Stage adaptation In 2011 Alex Mcsweeney adapted the novel into an English-language playscript. Previewed at the International Youth Arts Festival in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, UK in July, it subsequently premiered in August of the same year at Zoo Venues in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Critics received it positively, generally giving 4- and 5-star reviews. In 2014, German stage director Kateryna Sokolova adapted the novel focusing on its longest novella, Princess Mary. The play, directed by Kateryna Sokolova, premiered at the Schauspielhaus Zürich on 28 May. The production received universal acclaim, especially praising it for not having lost "neither the linguistic finesse nor the social paralysis of Lermontov’s Zeitgeist", both of which constitute the novel's Byronic character. On July 22, 2015, The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow premiered a ballet adaptation of Hero of Our Time. The ballet was choreographed by San Francisco