I remember in 1978 meeting two Ugandan captains in the hotel talking Russian. They had been educated in Moscow and since they came from different Ugandan peoples, it was the only way they could understand one another.

I'm trying to put more elements of the essay into my writing.

This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves, as a possession.

When man meets an obstacle he can't destroy, he destroys himself.

The extent of one man's guilt may be defined by how much of it is experienced by the party he injured.

In a society of little economic development, universal inactivity accompanies universal poverty. You survive not by struggling against nature, or by increasing production, or by relentless labor; instead you survive by expending as little energy as possible, by striving constantly to achieve a state of immobility.

The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.