“Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour.”

“Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour.”

“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.”