“Americans don't like to waste time on stupid things, for example, on the torturous process of coming up with names for their towns. And really, why strain yourself when so many wonderful names already exist in the world?The entrance to the town of Moscow is shown in the photograph. That's right, an absolutely authentic Moscow, just in the state of Ohio, not in the USSR in Moscow province.There's another Moscow in some other state, and yet another Moscow in a third state. On the whole, every state has the absolute right to have its very own Moscow.”

“One does not go to Moscow to get fat.”

“If Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, Cracow, Warsaw, and Berlin belong to Europe, then why not Leningrad, why not Moscow--indeed, why stop before Vladivostok? It is all part of Eurasia, there is no state frontier between...I would like to think of myself as some utopian son of Europe, able to touch the Pacific at San Francisco with one outstretched arm and at Vladivostok with the other, and keeping the peace everywhere within my embrace.”

“Twelve men conducted the investigation, gathering as on a knitting-needle the accursed stitches of this complicated case all over Moscow.”

“And by the way, my belief is that if men were the ones getting pregnant, abortions would be easier to get than food poisoning in Moscow”

“Moscow was, as some said, the most beautiful mistress a man could ever want, but never cross her: like any good woman, she might just cut off your balls for the hell of it.”