The demands of internal growth are incomparably more important to us...than the need for any external expansion of our power.

Not death itself, but only the moral preparation for it, holds terrors.

In our country they do not permit any information to be X-rayed through and through, nor any discussion to encompass all the facets of a subject. All this is invariably suppressed at the very beginning, so no ray of light should fall on the naked body of truth. And then all this is piled up in one formless heap covering many years, where it languishes for whole decades, until all interest and all means of sorting out the rusty blocks from all this trash are lost.

Mourn if you must, but don't stop fighting.

Art thaws even the frozen, darkened soul, opening it to lofty spiritual experience.

Generosity is a two-edged virtue for an artist - it nourishes his imagination but has a fatal effect on his routine.

Still, everybody wants to eat.