For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under Gods heaven. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience… from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence – the ability to make yourself work at your craft, every day – the belief, even in the face of obstacles, that youve got something worth saying. – Jennifer Weiner