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.

Human nature is full of riddles; . . . one of those riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength in themselves to rise up and free themselves first in spirit and then in body while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste of freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?'

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

The task of the artist is to sense more keenly than others the harmony of the world, the beauty and the outrage of what man has done to it, and poignantly to let people know.

Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand.

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.

The term "national idea" is an unclear one. One might think of it as a widely shared understanding among a people as to the desired way of life in their country, an idea that holds sway over the population. A unifying concept like that can be useful, but should never be created artificially or imposed top-down by the powers-that-be.