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.

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.

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.

Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

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.