Every master knows that the material teaches the artist.

We know that art is connected with the land, with its salt, with its smell, that outside of national culture there is no art. Cosmopolitanism - a world in which things lose their color and form, and words lose their significance. We love in our past all that we consider native, wonderful and fair.

It’s as much a writer’s concern, who is responsible to his readers for all the books written before him as well as those which will be written after him.

Every master knows that the material teaches the artist.

We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day... Do not count days; do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed.

Unfortunately, young Russian artists are in a difficult position today. Painting, like all other arts, rests on a continuity of experience. More than anything, young painters and sculptors need to know the works of their immediate elders. Such a continuity does not exist here to a sufficient degree in the visual arts.

You could cover the whole earth with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through.