“God allowed no mistakes.”

“Among all the nonsense, mistakes, and bad ideas we come up with, maybe some truth will sneak in.”

“Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.”

“Memory is like glass. A person who has died is still visible, very close. But we can no longer contact each other. Death is mute; it excludes conversations, only allows silence.”

“I'm a religious man," he said. "I don't believe in a particularGod, but even so one can have a faith, something beyondthe limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element ofbuilt-in faith, although it claims to be a science and notmerely an ideology. This is my first visit to the West: untilnow I have only been able to go to the Soviet Union orPoland or the Baltic states. In your country I see anabundance of material things. It seems to be unlimited. Butthere's a difference between our countries that is also asimilarity. Both are poor. You see, poverty has differentfaces. We lack the abundance that you have, and we don'thave the freedom of choice. In your country I detect a kind of poverty, which is that you do not need to fight for yoursurvival. For me the struggle has a religious dimension, andI would not want to exchange that for your abundance.”

“When one historical period is replaced by another, there isalways a group of people left over from the old society”

“Theexperience he'd gained during his years in the police forcehad given him this unambiguous answer: there are nomurderers. Only ordinary people who commit murder”