Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.

Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.

People's destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring—they're all alike, and they're all unhappy. Then there are others, like for instance you—you're one in a million. You're happy—

The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can't return even if it wants to.

It's immoral to steal, but you can take things.

In Moscow you sit in a huge room at a restaurant; you know no one and no one knows you, and at the same time you don't feel a stranger. But here you know everyone and everyone knows you, and yet you are a stranger - a stranger... A stranger, and lonely...

I am now and have always been a stranger to the realm of practical matters.