A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse

The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.

Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.

I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.

If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore.