How quickly a zek (a prisoner) gets cheeky-or, putting it in literary language, how quickly a man's requirements grow.

But nothing is all black in nature.

Was it Gorky who had said, "If your children are no better than you are, you have fathered them in vain, indeed you have lived in vain".

I leaf through the ancient philosophers and find my newest discoveries there.

It was wrong to be too pragmatic, to judge people solely by results; it was more humane to judge by intentions.

One word of truth outweighs the whole world.

I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago