I am never guided by a possible assessment of my work.

The problem of sexual minorities in Russia has been deliberately made controversial in Russia. There is no such problem in Russia.

One has to be insincere and promise something which you cannot fulfill. So you either have to be a fool who does not understand what you are promising, or deliberately be lying.

They say that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a homosexual. Truth be told, we don't love him because of that, but he was a great musician, and we all love his music. So what? I assure you that I work with these people. I sometimes award them with state prizes or decorations for their achievements in various fields. We have absolutely normal relations, and I don't see anything out of the ordinary here.

Frankly speaking, I could never even imagine that such information would be of interest to the American public or that the campaign headquarters of one of the candidates - in this case, Mrs. [Hillary] Clinton - apparently worked for her, rather than for all the Democratic Party candidates in an equal manner. I could never assume that anybody would find it interesting.

[Yasuhiro] Yamashita is a respected judo master not only in Japan but across the world. To me, he is an example of an outstanding athlete and a very good man.

A country in which the people are not healthy physically and psychologically, are poorly educated and illiterate, will never rise to the peaks of world civilization.