“How were you taken prisoner?' The interrogator asked my father. 'The Finns pulled me out of a lake.' 'You traitor! You were saving your own skin instead of the Motherland.' My father also considere...”

“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.”

“Why didn't we put Stalin on trial? I'll tell you why...In order to condemn Stalin, you'd have to condemn your friends and relatives along with him. The people closest to you...our neighbor Yuri tur...”

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

“They found records and video-cassettes at their place, a deck of cards, a chess set. In other words, everything that's banned.”

“Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another c...”

“The reactionary of any kind condemns sexual pleasure because it stimulates and repulses him at the same time. He is unable to solve the conflict within him between sexual demands and moralistic inh...”

“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”

“Of course, peace treaties are very attractive to those who sign them. They strengthen one's prestige with the electorate. But the time will come when the names of these public figures will be erase...”

“How would I explain to him that I couldnt make peace with him? How would I explain that if I did I would immediately lose my inner balance? How would I explain that one of the arms of my internal s...”

“Sometimes I feel like we're a knot, too tangled to be taken apart.”

“Memories of lost love they do enpain,Fleeting images of what once was never again to gain.Hold tight those memories that slip through the mind, To walk in those fields again with hera dream divi...”

“As she left the cold arena Angel had to laugh,Beaten by that of a wisp girl and her subliming cunning craft.Jove lay silent in his orbit; brooding, deep, dreamless forweep,And faithful dog Sirius r...”