In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.

Radio... force-feeds us music... everywhere and all the time... sewage-water music in which music is dying.

But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science , instantly fades away.

Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.

Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wish it were possible.

Disgust at having to talk about oneself is what distinguishes novelistic talent from lyric talent.

To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.