I like old people, just as I like old trees: in their shadow there is freshness and peace, one admires them, and around them everything is so calm.

Moscow, breathing fire like a human volcano with its smoldering lava of passion, ambition and politics, its hurly-burly of meetings and entertainment, Moscow is less than twenty miles away. It's always thirsting for something new, the newest events, the latest sensation.

When you have once gained sight, it is impossible to feign blindness.

It became clear to the whole world that a totalitarian regime could neither accuse nor transform itself: suicide was not in its nature, it could only kill others.

A sense of religion is something one is born with, like a musical ear. One can develop it, cultivate it, enrich it, but if one hasn't got its seed to begin with, no powers of the intellect, no sophistication of 'evidence' can awaken it.

On, those ever-changing moods of Moscow! How swiftly they go from black to white, from one extreme to another, from friendship to accusations, from adoration to hatred, from the permissive 'da' to that annihilating 'nyet.' Those eternal swings from a thaw to a freeze, whims that disregard their own rules, norms, and regulations!

Why did Americans smile so often? Was it out of politeness or because of a gay disposition? Whatever it was, I for one had never been spoiled with smiles. I found it very pleasant! ... I was beginning to understand that with Americans smiling was, as with healthy infants, a natural need. And my reaction was to respond in the same way.