Persecution mania is still around. In your writing, in your exchanges with people, meeting people who are in Russian affairs, Russian literature, etcetera.

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

What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.

It's partly the fault of the institutions of education. But it's partly the decision to be relieved of responsibility. Literature is simply the most focused form of the demands on the evolution of the species. It imposes a certain responsibility, moral, ethical and esthetic responsibility, and the species simply doesn't want to oblige.

This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.

The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.

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