Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote.

Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.

If a person can build a fence around himself, he is bound to do it.

The revolution is an amalgam of former Party functionaries, quasi- democrats, KGB officers, and black-market wheeler-dealers, who are standing in power now and have represented a dirty hybrid unseen in world history

Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied.

The secret is that when you've been pitched head first into hell you just write about it

Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!