For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.

In poetic thought, the role of the subconscious is played by euphony.

I had this fantasy of becoming a neurosurgeon. You know, the normal Jewish boy fantasy, but I wanted to be a neurosurgeon for some reason. So I started in this unpleasant way. I was an assistant to the coroner, opening up corpses, taking the innards out, opening skulls, taking the brains out.

Twentieth-century Russian literature has produced nothing special except perhaps one novel and two stories by Andrei Platonov, who ended his days sweeping streets.

On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound.

In the end, like the Almighty Himself, we make everything in our image, for want of a more reliable model; our artifacts tell more about ourselves than our confessions.