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

Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.

I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime.

... that maxim of Descartes: "Question everything!" Question everything!

The perception of the West as mostly a "knight of democracy" has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.

A great number of publications and movies on the history of the 20th century - albeit of uneven quality - are evidence of a growing demand. Quite recently, the state-owned TV channel 'Russia' aired a series based on Varlam Shalamov's works, showing the terrible, cruel truth about Stalin's camps. It was not watered down.

We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.