The Communists have for decades loudly proclaimed their goal of destroying the bourgeois world, while the West merely smiled at what seemed to be an extravagant joke.

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.

On our crowded planet there are no longer any internal affairs!

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.

Why can't you understand? The stars fall down now and then. The gaps have to be filled.

It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.

History is too slow for our life, for our hearts.