Word: life
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...writer, I might have been able to bear it. But, since I am a writer, I can't. Writing is the only occupation in the world that seriously appeals to me. When I write, I have the illusion that there is some sort of sense in my life. Not to write is for me roughly the same as for a fish not to swim. I have been writing as long as I can remember. My first work was published 25 years...
...real life will not forgive a man who violates his conscience. Those writers have all become such cynics and spiritual cripples and their hidden regret for their wasted talent eats away at them to such an extent that their wretched existence cannot be called life but rather a caricature of life. It would probably be difficult to think up a worse punishment for oneself than to have to spend one's whole life trembling, cringing, trying fearfully to get the sense of the latest order and fearing to make the slightest mistake...
Then for some months, I dug my manuscripts up from their hiding places in the ground, photographed them and buried them again. I have succeeded in bringing those films across the frontier with me-thousands of pages on film, everything I have ever written in my life. They include my known works, such as Babi Yar, but in its true form. They also include things that could not be published in Russia. And some that I doubt whether I shall be able to publish in the West...
...just an author living in this 20th century on this earth. And what is more, a writer who has made a desperate effort to be in this century, an honest writer who wants to associate himself with those who strive for humanity in the present wild, wild, wild life of this mad, mad world...
...remaining in Britain so as to be able to carry on in freedom the work which is the very essence of my life -literature. I took this decision a long time ago, after having thought about it carefully, and I have been preparing to carry it out for a whole year. Nobody else knew about this but me. Conditions of life in the Soviet Union, where everybody is obliged to spy on everybody else and where hypocrisy prevails, does not allow anyone to take the risk of entrusting a single person with such a secret. Moreover, I was twice refused...