Man is what he reads.

An ethical man doesn't need a consensus of his allies in order to act against something he finds reprehensible.

I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside.

A writer is seldom satisfied with the condition he finds himself in. We're all given to fretting a lot.

No man-made system is perfect, and the system of oppression is no exception. It is subject to fatigue, to cracks, which you are the likelier to discover the longer your term.

I belong to the Russian language. As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives.