The bureaucracy has grown such powerful roots in Russia, and corruption is so widespread, that people from opposition have no interest in changing anything.

Nothing has changed in Russia since Ivan the Terrible when it comes to the divide between the people and the state. The state demands a sacred willingness to make sacrifices from the people.

The West should be even more vocal in insisting that the Russians respect human rights.

The Khodorkovsky case is typical of the "oprichnina" - the system of oppression.

I'm not a prophet or a teacher, I just ask questions. I don't think a writer should be a teacher, but should know how to pose the questions and explain the problems.

I have Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to thank that a Russian writer can not only write anything he wants, but also publish it.

As a child I perceived violence as a sort of natural law. In the totalitarian Soviet Union, oppression held everything together. It was the sinister energy of our country.

The worst thing that can happen to Russia is indifference in the West - that is, if it were interested in nothing but oil and gas.

The Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov once said: In a Democracy, portraits of a nation's leader should never exceed the size of a postage stamp. That won't happen so quickly in Russia.

In Russia one can be as pure as can be and still lose everything in a flash and end up in prison.

Everyone in Russia must awaken the citizen within himself.

When you have discovered a stain in yourself, you eagerly seek for and gladly find stains in others.

Take all the rules away. How can we live if we don't change?

To the creative individual all experience is seminal-all events are equidistant from new ideasand insights.

Man is abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no aim but what he sets himself.

I saw a sneak preview of Jack Reacher and give two thumbs up to Tom Cruise. He did a great job with the role.

Was the leaker in question, Ed Snowden, was he a traitor?

We are all capable of greater things than we realize.

I believe in sympathy, compassion and forgiveness.

One must be patient like the earth. What iniquities are being perpetuated on her! Yet she quietly endures them all.

...now and then a giggling trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them oatmeal.