One can build the Empire State Building, discipline the Prussian army, make a state hierarchy mightier than God, yet fail to overcome the unaccountable superiority of certain human beings.

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 and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art-and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations.

When things are too clear, they are no longer interesting.

We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.

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.

A man used to riding in a car cannot understand a pedestrian.