There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even – if you will – eccentricity.
For darkness restores what light cannot repair.
Life – the way it really is – is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse.
In the business of writing, what one accumulates is not experience but uncertainties.
How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
Geography blended with time equals destiny.
The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.
Poetry is what is gained in translation.
Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of state.
Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty’s existence is that we never know when we are to die.
Every life has a file, if you will.
The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
Russian talk of political evil is as natural as eating...