Of all afflictions, the worst is self contempt.
It became clear to the whole world that a totalitarian regime could neither accuse nor transform itself: suicide was not in its nature, it could only kill others.
The one good thing about not seeing you is that I can write you letters.
For twenty-seven years I was witness to the spiritual deterioration of my own father, watching day after day how everything human in him left him and how gradually he turned into a grim monument to his own self.
When you have once gained sight, it is impossible to feign blindness.
He suddenly opened his eyes and looked at everyone in the room. It was a terrible gaze, mad or maybe furious and full of fear of death. . . Then something incomprehensible and frightening happened. . . . He suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse on us all. . . . The next moment, after a final effort, the spirit wrenched itself free of the flesh.
As a result of half a century of Soviet rule people have been weaned from a belief in human kindness.
I'm a light eater. As soon as it's light, I start to eat.
I ended up [doing video] meeting Gillian [Grassie] at the same time that we were getting together a book. We ended up working on it, and she recognized that I had a flair for certain things, and we've worked through it together so that the writing could be really good. It was the perfect partnership, just finding my literary voice and figuring out how comedy translates to the written word.
They really are bad shots.
It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame.