“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.”

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

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.

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

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.

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.

Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one’s well-being.

The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.

I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences… essential to that institution’s ability to function effectively and achieve its mandated objectives.

I was a soul singer first and I’d write love songs. I find with soul music it’s really hard to write about anything else. But I was 15 at the time when I was doing that and, to be honest, I’d never experienced love, so the words were kind of meaningless.

The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short term political concerns.

But I really resist categories – that naming is a closing down of meaning. Women’s art, political art – those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I’m resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist.

Those fighters, the Syrian part that you’re talking about, lost its natural incubators in the Syrian society – they don’t have incubators anymore ; that’s why they have incubators abroad.

Across the continent, political divisions are deepening. For all of these reasons, the specter of a euro zone collapse has not been dispatched.

The problem with the West is that they start with political reform going towards democracy.

On a very basic level, many people think celebrities have too much already, so we shouldn’t be entitled to our political opinions.