I am caught like a beast at bay. Somewhere are people, freedom, light, But all I hear is the baying of the pack, There is no way out for me.

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

I have been writing in spurts, bit by bit. It is incredibly difficult. Everything is corroded, broken, dismantled; everything is covered with hardened layers of accumulated insensitivity, deafness, entrenched routine. It is disgusting.

Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.

That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.

As before the collapse, the setting sun brushed the tiles, brought out the warm brown glow on the wallpaper, and hung the shadow of the birch on the wall as if it were a woman's scarf.

He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.