I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.

Tragedy, as you know, is always a fait accompli, whereas terror always has to do with anticipation, with man's recognition of hisown negative potential--with his sense of what he is capable of.

I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside.

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

I don't believe in that country any longer. I'm not interested. I'm writing in the language, and I like the language.

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

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