Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality.

Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.

What would things been like [in Russia] if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people?

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.

I dare hope that all the peoples who have lived through communism will understand that communism is to blame for the bitter pages of their history.

Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.