Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.

If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.

If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.

After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.

In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.

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

I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.