As a result of half a century of Soviet rule people have been weaned from a belief in human kindness.

Go to meet destiny halfway and destiny will come to your assistance.

God grants an easy death only to the just.

Trees and flowers were often more meaningful to me than people. They always helped me, consoled me, giving the soul a chance to believe once more than the world was beautiful and sensible, that the mad absurdities and cruelties of men were against the laws of Nature and the Universal Mind; that sooner or later violence would suffer utter defeat on this Earth. No words collected in books were more effectively convincing to me than foliage, clouds, rippling waters, rain.

The American spring is like the country itself: abundant, rich, flowing over you like a full tide. ... Azaleas were suddenly ablaze. White dogwoods stood like brides in the wood - these trees of all colors were new to me; one does not meet them in Europe, and dogwood cannot even be transplanted to other continents. White and pink magnolias, yellowish rhododendrons, all of them lived happily side by side with our ordinary lilacs and lilies of the valley - the Russian symbols of spring.

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.

The one good thing about not seeing you is that I can write you letters.