I insist on believing that beauty elevates human beings.

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

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

The one and only substitute for experience which we have not ourselves had is art, literature. We have been given a miraculous faculty: Despite the differences of language, customs and social structure we are able to communicate life experience from one whole nation to another, to communicate a difficult national experience many decades long which the second of the two has never experienced.

Gorbachev's administration was amazingly politically naïve, inexperienced and irresponsible towards the country. It was not governance but a thoughtless renunciation of power. The admiration of the West in return only strengthened his conviction that his approach was right. But let us be clear that it was Mikhail Gorbachev, and not Boris Yeltsin, as is now widely being claimed, who first gave freedom of speech and movement to the citizens of Russia.

I have always had that inner drive, since my birth. And I have always devoted myself gladly to work - to work and to the struggle.

Periods of rapid and fundamental change were never favourable for literature. Significant works, have nearly always and everywhere been created in periods of stability, be it good or bad.