“When leaders betray their people and the people don't overthrow them, it's not just the leaders who should be blamed.”

“In a war the most dangerous thing is to understand the enemy. To understand is to forgive. And wehave no right to do that—we never have had, not since the creation of the world.”

“Others are not born bad or good... and neither are people, by the way.”

“Being on the side of the Light is much tougher than being on the side of the Dark...”

“What if it turns out there really are witches and vampires and werewolves living right here alongside us? After all, what better disguise could there be than to get your image enshrined in the culture of the mass media? Anything that's described in artistic terms and shown in the movies stops being frightening and mysterious. For real horror you need the spoken word, you need an old grandpa sitting on a bench, scaring the grandkids in the evening: 'And then the Master of the house came to him and said: "I won't let you go, I'll tie you up and bind you tight and you'll rot under the fallen branches!"' That's the way to make people wary of anomalous phenomena! Kids sense that, you know–it's no wonder they love telling stories about the Black Han and the Coffin on Wheels. But modern literature, and especially the movies, it all just dilutes that instinctive horror. How can you feel afraid of Dracula, if he's been killed a hundred times? How can you be afraid of aliens, if our guys always squelch them? Yes, Hollywood is the great luller of human vigilance. A toast–to the death of Hollywood, for depriving us of a healthy fear of the unknown!”

“The laws of nature are not intelligent,’ I replied. ‘The force of gravity is not intelligent. Electricity is not intelligent. A savage looking at a television might assume that it’s a sapient being, but we—’‘A sapient being? Looking at a television these days, the only possible assumption is that it’s a loud-mouthed, hysterical madman suffering from progressive mental debility,’ Anna Tikhonovna said derisively.”

“An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense.”

“Drink your coffee, it clears out the brain in the morning”

“I get the same buzz cleaning up the yard as Leo Tolstoy did from scything hay.”

“When leaders betray their people and the people don't overthrow them, it's not just the leaders who should be blamed.”

“After all, inside every woman, no matter how grown up she is, there is still a frightened little girl.”