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

In our age, when technology is gaining control over life, when material well-being is considered the most important goal, when the influence of religion has been weakened everywhere in the world, a special responsibility lies upon the writer.

The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.

I have grown used to the fact that public repentance is the most unacceptable option for the modern politician.

Voting for impersonal parties and their programmes is a false substitute for the only true way to elect people's representatives: voting by an actual person for an actual candidate.

I have always insisted on the need for local self-government for Russia, but I never opposed this model to Western democracy. On the contrary, I have tried to convince my fellow citizens by citing the examples of highly effective local self-government systems in Switzerland and New England, both of which I saw first-hand.

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.