Everyone in Russia must awaken the citizen within himself.

The West should be even more vocal in insisting that the Russians respect human rights.

Nothing has changed in Russia since Ivan the Terrible when it comes to the divide between the people and the state. The state demands a sacred willingness to make sacrifices from the people.

In Russia one can be as pure as can be and still lose everything in a flash and end up in prison.

The worst thing that can happen to Russia is indifference in the West - that is, if it were interested in nothing but oil and gas.

I have Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to thank that a Russian writer can not only write anything he wants, but also publish it.

Germans, Frenchmen and Englishmen can say of themselves: "I am the state." I cannot say that. In Russia only the people in the Kremlin can say that. All other citizens are nothing more than human material with which they can do all kinds of things.