“I believed a person could consider himself a human being as long as he felt totally prepared to kill himself, to interfere in his own biography. It was this awareness that gave me the will to live. I checked myself – frequently – and felt I had the strength to die, and thus remained alive.”

“I believed a person could consider himself a human being as long as he felt totally prepared to kill himself, to interfere in his own biography. It was this awareness that gave me the will to live. I checked myself – frequently – and felt I had the strength to die, and thus remained alive.”

— Varlam Shalamov