I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman. Friendship is far more human.

Gambling in the mark has been the great indoor sport of the capitalists for months, and consequently food has increased by 25 to 100 per cent.

I joined another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small print, asking us to read it carefully and then come prepared to ask questions. It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.

Like all my family and class, I considered it a sign of weakness to show affection; to have been caught kissing my mother would have been a disgrace, and to have shown affection for my father would have been a disaster.

There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.

I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.