“Sometimes I feel quite distinctly that what is inside me is not all of me. There is something else, sublime, quite indestructible, some tiny fragment of the Universal spirit.Don't you feel that?”

“Then came the time for the evening visit to the toilet, for which, in all likelihood, you had waited, all atremble, all day. How relieved, how eased, the whole world suddenly became! How the great questions all simplified themselves at the same instant---did you feel it?”

“How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago? Hour by hour planes fly there, ships steer their course there, and trains thunder off to it--but all with nary a mark on them to tell of their destination. And at ticket windows or at travel bureaus for Soviet or foreign tourists the employees would be astounded if you were to ask for a ticket to go there. They know nothing and they've never heard of the Archipelago as a whole or any one of its innumerable islands.Those who go to the Archipelago to administer it get there via the training schools of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.Those who go there to be guards are conscripted via the military conscription centers.And those who, like you and me, dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest.Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity?The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: "You are under arrest."If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm?But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these dis­placements in our universe, and both the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life's experience,can gasp out only: "Me? What for?"And this is a question which, though repeated millions andmillions of times before, has yet to receive an answer.Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somer­sault from one state into another.We have been happily borne—or perhaps have unhappilydragged our weary way—down the long and crooked streets ofour lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood,rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never givena thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to pene­trate them with our vision or our understanding. But there iswhere the Gulag country begins, right next to us, two yards awayfrom us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous num­ber of closely fitted, well-disguised doors and gates in thesefences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one! Andall of a sudden the fateful gate swings quickly open, and fourwhite male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor but none­theless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap,ear, and drag us in like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate toour past life, is slammed shut once and for all.That's all there is to it! You are arrested!And you'll find nothing better to respond with than a lamblikebleat: "Me? What for?"That's what arrest is: it's a blinding flash and a blow whichshifts the present instantly into the past and the impossible intoomnipotent actuality.That's all. And neither for the first hour nor for the first daywill you be able to grasp anything else.”

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.”

“Here is a riddle not for us contemporaries to figure out: Why is Germany allowed to punish its evildoers and Russia is not? What kind of disastrous path lies ahead of us if we do not have the chance to purge ourselves of that putrefaction rotting inside our body? What, then, can Russia teach the world?”

“What is an optimist? The man who says, "It's worse everywhere else. We're better off than the rest of the world. We've been lucky." He is happy with things as they are and he doesn't torment himself.What is a pessimist? The man who says, "Things are fine everywhere but here. Everyone else is better off than we are. We're the only ones who've had a bad break." He torments himself continually.”

“It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”