I'm afraid of freedom, it feels like some drunk guy could show up and burn my dacha at any moment.

The mysterious Russian soul... Everyone wants to understand it. They read Dostoevsky: what's behind that soul of theirs? Well, behind our soul there's just more soul.

Instead of lullabies, my mother would sing us songs of the Revolution. Now she sings them to her grandchildren. 'Are you nuts?' I ask her. She replies, 'I don't know any other songs.

Many greeted the truth as an enemy. And freedom as well.

Anna, " he said, dragging his frosted fingers through my hair."Don't you know what it means when a boy pulls your hair at your birthday party?" "No." Just, then, i didn't know what anything meant.

Never forget to forgive yourself

My best teachers were mess, failure, death, mistakes, and the people I hated, including myself.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

She's got electric boots, a mohair suit, you know I read it in a magazine.

Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in.

Sometimes, all it takes to become human again is someone who can see you that way, no matter how you present on the surface.

My fathers a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.

Everybody assumes I know everything, so they send me these notes sometimes, and I don't know what they're talking about.

A proud man never shows his pride so much as when he is civil.