Ukraina: he sighs, breathing in the remembered scent of mown hay and cherry blossom. But I catch the distinct synthetic whiff of New Russia. Her.

When I saw the car pulling into the driveway and I saw her getting out and walking towards the house, can you imagine Nadezhda, I performed involuntary excretion in my trousers.

In the early days of space travel, one interesting problem emerged from experiments with weightlessness. Americans found that... normal ink pen would not work without gravity feed. Scientists undertook extensive research, finally developed high-technology pen to work in conditions of no gravity. In Russia, scientist faced with the same problem found a different solution. Instead of pen, they used pencil.

Mother, who had never missed a chance to fulminate against the evils of our time including privatisation, Jeremy Clarkson, and pay-day loans.

Nadia, if all women were to wear paint on their faces, just think, there could be no more natural selection. The inevitable result would be the uglification of the species. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?

There is a special sadness at the end of a journey. For it’s only when you get to your destination that you discover the road doesn’t end here after all.

Although I had long since stopped regarding myself as a Christian, I still thought of Christians as being basically decent, tolerant easy-going types like myself, while Muslims I’d always thought of as, well, let’s say a bit prone to fundamentalism.

In my country we say that ignorance is the warm bath in which it is comfortable to sit but dangerous to lie down.

Why you have such bourgeois preoccupation with all personal history?''Because it's important... it defines... it helps us understand... because we can learn... Oh, I don't know.

With a feeling of despondency so intense that it was almost pleasurable, he got out his guitar.So this was to be his condition now.What was he but a fragment of broken churned-uphumanity washed up on this faraway shore? This was where his journey had brought him.... There mus be a song in this...