In school, I was playing old men and women, babies, Russian people, and all sorts of weird parts - a lot of comedy - and that's sort of like home to me.
Russian people are not stupid. They know that the system we are living in is undemocratic.
All Russian people know who I am. So I use this to the good because, you know, it's really hard to shut my mouth off because... I'm too bright, and I'm too many years visible to everyone.
'Daddy used to be a Georgian,' Stalin's son, Vasily, once said. Actually, the dictator didn't truly become Russian; he remained Georgian culturally. Yet he embraced the imperial mission of the Russian people.
I am president of Russian Standard Company, biggest luxury vodka in Russia. My bank, Russian Standard Bank, issues biggest number of credit cards in Russia. I want for Russian people to have their own best vodka, their own best bank, their own best credit card.
I started like many young Russian people in the beginning of perestroika when it seemed that everything was possible.
Many Russia experts note the deep and sad capacity of the Russian people for suffering.
I hope for the experience of people standing together, turning their backs to the city and facing this, and hearing the leaves rustle. Well, maybe it won't be as bucolic as at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but I know you will feel removed from the city.
The longer people are unemployed, the less employable they become. Skills become rusty; managers look more suspiciously at someone who has been out of work for years than a candidate already employed.
In the 'Revelation Space' books, the spaceships are a bit old and rusty, and things go wrong, and they don't work quite how they're meant to. And people asked why I did it this way, and groping around for an explanation, I said that I grew up in Barry, this post-industrial sea town full of rusting infrastructure.
Many people are in a rut and a rut is nothing but a grave - with both ends kicked out.
I was at rock bottom for a year and a half - and the people who got me out of my rut were my fans.
People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.
I was known for being quite... ruthless at ABB. I drove hard targets, pushed my people. But I was always fair. Once I was convinced of someone, I let them handle things themselves. But if you kept doing badly, there was no place for you.
We all fall into our habits, our routines, our ruts. They're used quite often, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid living, to avoid doing the messy part of having relationships with other people, of dealing with a person next to us. That's why we can all be in a room on our cell phones and not have to deal with one another.
I always have strong urges to sabotage myself. Whenever someone says they like something about my music, I tend to not want to do that anymore. It's not even that I don't like it anymore: it's that I keep trying to find ways for people to dislike me.
In management, everything is different. If you look at successful coaches, they always need time to kickstart something. Arrigo Sacchi - when he started the revolution at Milan, he was almost on the brink of being sacked, but then he won, and people started believing in the system; he had more time to breathe.
It kills me when people talk about California hedonism. Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.
Whether a revolution succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.
When the Temple was destroyed, the Jewish people faced a crisis unlike any other in its history. For centuries, the sacrificial system had served as the primary medium of atonement before the Almighty.
