A Hard Life Improves The Vision.

When The Whole Discussion Of "developing A National Idea" Hastily Began In Post-soviet Russia, I Tried To Pour Cold Water On It With The Objection That, After All The Devastating Losses We Had Experienced, It Would Be Quite Sufficient To Have Just One Task: The Preservation Of A Dying People.

Sometimes I Feel Quite Distinctly That What Is Inside Me Is Not All Of Me. There Is Something Else, Sublime, Quite Indestructible, Some Tiny Fragment Of The Universal Spirit.don't You Feel That?

Literature Cannot Develop Between The Categories "permitted"—"not Permitted"—"this You Can And That You Can't." Literature That Is Not The Air Of Its Contemporary Society, That Dares Not Warn In Time Against Threatening Moral And Social Dangers, Such Literature Does Not Deserve The Name Of Literature; It Is Only A Facade. Such Literature Loses The Confidence Of Its Own People, And Its Published Works Are Used As Waste Paper Instead Of Being Read. -letter To The Fourth National Congress Of Soviet Writers

The Central Government Possesses No Plan Of Finding The Way Out Of This Blind Alley.

Today When We Say The West We Are Already Referring To The West And To Russia. We Could Use The Word 'modernity' If We Exclude Africa, And The Islamic World, And Partially China.