It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life -- and herein lies its secret -- takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.

Extremism means borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.

The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.

Sad company is bad company.

All previous crimes of the Russian empire had been committed under the cover of a discreet shadow. The deportation of a million Lithuanians, the murder of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the liquidation of the Crimean Tatars remain in our memory, but no photographic documentation exists; sooner or later they will therefore be proclaimed as fabrications.

Living is being happy: seeing, hearing, touching, drinking, eating, urinating, defecating, diving into the water and gazing at the sky, laughing and crying.

People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.