Quote by Isaac Babel: “No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put right.”

A perfectly placed full stop — the right ending at the right moment — can land with more power than any dramatic outburst. This is a claim for precision in language over volume. The most devastating thing a writer can do is end exactly where the ending should be, without one extra word.

Babel made this remark in a speech to the First Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, though the observation had circulated earlier. Soviet literature in the early 1930s was increasingly under ideological pressure to adopt the style of Socialist Realism. Babel's defense of precision and style was itself a quiet act of resistance against the demand for propaganda.

Russian-Jewish writer known for his Red Cavalry stories based on his experiences riding with Cossack forces during the Russo-Polish War, and for his Odessa Tales, a rich cycle of stories about a Jewish gangster. He was arrested by the NKVD in 1939 and executed in 1940; his work was suppressed for decades.