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I realize that the strivings of the Polish people gave rise, and still do so, to the feelings of understanding and solidarity all over the world.

Without the communist oppression, I am absolutely sure I would now be a local stupid professor of philosophy in Ljubljana.

Some of our finest leaders were not intellectuals at all, and I admire them enormously because they weren't. Harry Truman wasn't.

All my mind was centered on my studies, which, especially at the beginning, were difficult. In fact, I was insufficiently prepared to follow the physical science course at the Sorbonne, for, despite all my efforts, I had not succeeded in acquiring in Poland a preparation as complete as that of the French students following the same course.

I came from two harsh dictatorships, Nazi and Stalinist. I never thought of becoming a writer as such, yet in a lucid moment, I recognised what I had to do.

The road that led me to literature was very different from the one followed by my fellow writers in Poland.

I believed that I was being forced to sacrifice my family and my career in defense of the Communist Party, from which I had long been separated and which I had grown to dislike and distrust.

In Georgia, people had already understood that communism couldn't survive, and I came to the institute in Moscow, and people still believed in it. They were completely different people, and I found it very difficult psychologically.

I always needle a bit when people say I'm a champion of the Poles, because I've always had a very multinational view of Poland.

Poland was the racial laboratory of the Nazis. This is where they started to put their abhorrent theories into practice.