At war a Russian man puts on a white shirt. He may live in sin, but he dies like a saint.

Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.

The longer a nation's history, the more wars, invasions, wanderings, and periods of captivity it has seen-the greater the diversity of its faces.

I don't want you to be young and beautiful. I only want one thing. I want you to be kind-hearted - and not just towards cats and dogs.

There's nothing more difficult than saying goodbye to a house where you've suffered.

I have written only what I have thought through, felt through and suffered through.

He was endowed with the extraordinary powers of endurance characteristic of madmen and simpletons.

The sea was not freedom; it was a likeness of freedom, a symbol of freedom...How splendid freedom must be if a mere likeness of it, a mere reminder of it, is enough to fill a man with happiness.

Why do people have memories? It would be easier to die - anything to stop remembering.

There are people whose souls have just withered, people who are willing to go along with anything evil - anything so as not to be suspected of disagreeing with whoever is in power.

I don't believe in your "Good". I believe in human kindness.

Follow your heart, listen to your inner voice, stop caring about what others think.

Our biological rhythms are the symphony of the cosmos, music embedded deep within us to which we dance, even when we can't name the tune.

Attack is the secret of defense

The Nazis were well dressed. Today's racists are a rag-tag bunch with no sense of style or panache.

One should not go into churches if one wants to breathe pure air.

I'm a very hopeful person.

My own thing is in my head. I hear sounds and if I don't get them together nobody else will.

Bush is an idiot and he's President, so anything's possible

I love because there is not enough room in my heart to hate.

Life Among the Savages is a disrespectful memoir of my children.