Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.

A man should know about himself two or three things: whether he is a coward; whether he is an honest man or given to lies; whether he is an ambitious man. One should define oneself first of all in those terms, and only then in terms of culture, race, creed.

At certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise wouldn't be retained by the mind.

As a form of moral insurance, at least, literature is much more dependable than a system of beliefs or a philosophical doctrine. Since there are no laws that can protect us from ourselves, no criminal code is capable of preventing a true crime against literature; though we can condemn the material suppression of literature - the persecution of writers, acts of censorship, the burning of books - we are powerless when it comes to its worst violation: that of not reading the books. For that crime, a person pays with his whole life; if the offender is a nation, it pays with its history.

When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.

What's happening in Russia is devoid of autobiographical interest for me. Maybe it's egocentric. Whatever it is, feel free to use it.

Bad literature is a form of treason.