“My friend Leonid Shvets is a long-time journalist, commentator, and ed...” — Keith Gessen Quote

“My friend Leonid Shvets is a long-time journalist, commentator, and editor. He was born in Belarus and came to Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, to go to school, then moved to Kiev for work.”

“To be on the other side of the law-and-order machine in this country is awful. It is dehumanizing and degrading and deforming. It fills you with a helpless rage because, once there, you can only make things worse for yourself by speaking up.”

“While I was in Astana, a ballet master from St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre staged a performance of 'Giselle' in the opera hall. It was one of only a few performances to grace Astana's concert spaces in many weeks, and tickets were impossible to come by.”

“In 1947, the year Clinton was born, there were no women serving in the Senate.”

“We do not only have a Turkish side, inherited from our parents and our families, we were born and raised in Gelsenkirchen. It is a city with a high percentage of emigrants.”

“I've always done things the hard way. I was born like a piece of tangled yarn. The job is trying to untangle it, and I'll probably go on doing it for the rest of my life.”