In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.

Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family.

What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.

Twentieth-century Russian literature has produced nothing special except perhaps one novel and two stories by Andrei Platonov, who ended his days sweeping streets.

How delightful to find a friend in everyone.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

For darkness restores what light cannot repair.

I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out which is worse; the dark inside, or the darkness out.

Geography blended with time equals destiny.

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse

Poetry is what is gained in translation.

The light shines in the soul, awaken the spirit and gives clearer sight.

Being best at things has nothing to do with talent

Like actors and writers who are on and off again in terms of employment, I had a very unstructured life.

It's not necessarily how many minutes you're on screen, it's the material you have. It's more important what it is you have to do than the amount of time you're there.

Being a Dad is the greatest, except for assembling things.

Life tells you to take the elevator, but love tells you to take the stairs.

If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.

Everything in Russia is made of cement - phone booths, fence posts and light bulbs.

The mind and the soul must work together if you are to experience true bliss. Try not to spend too much time exclusively in your mind. It is a magnificent tool, but it has a limited perspective.

Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.