Submissiveness to fate, the total abdication of your own will in the shaping of your life, the recognition that it was impossible to guess the best and the worst ahead of time but that it was easy to take a step you would reproach yourself for-all this freed the prisoner from any bondage, made him calmer, and even ennobled him.

To coexist with communism on the same planet is impossible. Either it will spread, cancer-like, to destroy mankind, or else mankind will have to rid itself of communism (and even then face lengthy treatment for secondary tumors).

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.

But what can you say in a letter?

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.

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.