“I get the same buzz cleaning up the yard as Leo Tolstoy did from scything hay.”

“Art is bad when ‘you see the intent and get put off.’ (Goethe) In Tolstoy one is unaware of the intent, and sees only the thing itself. from the book, On Retranslating A Russian Classic Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy”

“Let me give you a piece of advice: Leo Tolstoy is not the only human being on this planet. Yet all I ever hear you talking about is Leo Tolstoy . . . (tr Benjamin Sher)”

“But in Old Rimrock, NJ, in 1995, when the Ivan Ilyches come trooping back to lunch at the clubhouse after their morning round of golf and started to crow, "It doesn't get any better than this," they may be a lot closer to the truth than Leo Tolstoy ever was.”

“Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented.”

“An artist must know the reality he is depicting in its minutest detail. In my opinion we have only one shining example of that - Count Leo Tolstoy.”