It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.

It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.