“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.”

“Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.”

“When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.”

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

“You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.”

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