“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.”

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.

Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man.