We know that art is connected with the land, with its salt, with its smell, that outside of national culture there is no art. Cosmopolitanism - a world in which things lose their color and form, and words lose their significance. We love in our past all that we consider native, wonderful and fair.

People seldom learn from the mistakes of others-not because they deny the value of the past, but because they are faced with new problems.

Man is apt to be more moved by the art of his own period, not because it is more perfect, but because it is organically related to him.

Music has a great advantage: without mentioning anything, it can say everything.

Do not count the days, do not count the miles. Count only the Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill.

Kill the Germans, wherever you find them! Every German is our moral enemy. Have no mercy on women, children, or the aged! Kill every German - wipe them out!

We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day... Do not count days do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed.

Unfortunately, young Russian artists are in a difficult position today. Painting, like all other arts, rests on a continuity of experience. More than anything, young painters and sculptors need to know the works of their immediate elders. Such a continuity does not exist here to a sufficient degree in the visual arts.

You could cover the whole earth with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through.

It’s as much a writer’s concern, who is responsible to his readers for all the books written before him as well as those which will be written after him.

Time narrows or expands according to how we approach it. It varies with a man’s breadth, with his heart.