Author of quotes: Ilya Sergeevich Glazunov

When someone says he is a pole, a Frenchman, a Jew, Tatar, Georgian, its no one to blame. But if you say: "I am Russian" - once people start talking about chauvinism. This biased injustice!

I am a nationalist. Chauvinist would say that my Russian people the best of all the others. And I, as a patriot, saying: Russian people are not worse than others. But I'm proud that I'm Russian.

An artist has made me Leningrad, with its masses of slender houses, its Palace square, his Neva, bridges, wind... the Hermitage - flickering like candles, reflected in the parquet floor, dark breakthroughs paintings in gilt frames... How many can remember - drawing. My first impression in the conscious life - a piece of blue sky with dazzling white foam of clouds, the road, drowning in a field of daisies, and a mysterious forest in the distance. From this moment as if someone turned on me, saying, "Live!"

I'm sure the gates of hell shall not overcome, but each of us must fight for the good, as it sounds lush and bombastic, and believe that evil exists as a cancer in the world - if it shall devour before the end of the body, it dies with the evil with good.

When I wanted to send a picture of the "Mystery of the twentieth century" in America, only one voice in the Central Committee said, "Enough to produce dissidents". And I remained. I didn't want to leave! I could... I offered to stay all that I wrote, the kings and presidents of different countries. I always went back.

Modern art is something that is understood by the people, and the people - we are with you. It's taxi drivers, academics, homeless people, schoolchildren and students.

I write in silence. I need to feel the inner music of the soul of the person whose portrait I am writing. The perfect setting - if this sounds classical music: it creates the mood. Every portrait is a test for me, I have no right to write it is indifferent. Every person is a universe, each extremely interesting: and Builder, an astronaut and a famous actress, and Vietnamese opolchenka and miner, and student, working at BAM... to Draw a person does not mean to draw a compliment to him, no, to tell the truth! And it needs to be, otherwise it is not a portrait. Portrait - a document of the human spirit, the real form of humanism.