Leonid Zorin's late prose (1924-2020) was written by a man who turned 90, but it really is prose, and not just memoirs of a writer who has seen and survived a lot, a famous playwright whose plays adorn the theater stage to this day, and the wonderful film "Pokrovsky Gate", shot according to his script, remains a favorite for many generations. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is intellectual prose, saturated with the most important questions - about the essence of man, about everyday life and holidays, about successes and failures, about the tricks of history, about love, about death, the approach and inevitability of which he feels more and more acutely, which creates a special existential tension in the book. And, of course, about creativity, and more specifically, about writing, which, according to Zorin, is happiness, hard labor, and a mystery that he does not get tired of solving, looking into himself, into his capabilities, into his unquenchable creative dissatisfaction. In addition to short stories, the book also includes the most recent entries selected by his son, which the author kept until the end of his days and which represent a special genre, aphoristic and extremely capacious, allowing you to feel the natural, like breathing, daily work of comprehending the ending life.