Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!

You and I are like the first two people on earth who at the beginning of the world had nothing to cover themselves with - at the end of it, you and I are just as stripped and homeless. And you and I are the last remembrance of all that immeasurable greatness which has been created in all the thousands of years between their time and ours, and it is in memory of all that vanished splendour that we live and love and weep and cling to one another.

Mother Russia is on the move, she can't stand still, she's restless and can't find rest, she's talking and she can't stop.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

You are eternity's hostage A captive of mine.

You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.

I used to be very revolutionary, but now I think that nothing can be gained by brute force. People must be drawn to good by goodness.