Evil tempts every soul, but a weak soul tempts evil.

Pushing the boundaries of my golden cage, searching for new ways of expression and freedom, unveiling the ambiguities between music and art, friendship and love—that was my summer of 1979.

My eyes still swelled with tears, but my heart was dancing the lazgi.

But the connection between us was in the air, growing stronger with each stroke of his brush and with every cadenza of my piano performance as we struggled to find our unique voices. He by...

Once upon a time, when the evil spirit of darkness reigned over the Land of Azerbaijan, hiding the sun inside his underground caves,When the orphan sky peered at the Caucasus Mountains from the black dome...

How easy to be free. How strong we are when we have nothing to lose.

Music is not in the notes but in what is between them.

The music began, passages of immense technical complexity fluidly bridging Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro with Renoir’s impressionism. The gloom and shadows of claustrophobic chambers contrasting with the vibrant radiance of a wide-open landscape. The realism of humanity...

My fingers traced the melody on an invisible keyboard—my usual way to connect with the music, to feel its emotions on my fingertips. I touched the keys softly, as if gliding my hands through water,...

The external evils are nothing compared to the evils that we harbor in our souls.

Ballade no. 1.

The hurt is the place where the music enters you.

By the time I turned fifteen, Communism had become my religion.

I desire to know you. Every breath of your heart, every fleeting look on your face, the rhythm of your joys, and the melancholy of your sorrows.

A knife wound heals, but a tongue wound festers.

Destiny is a stubborn maiden. She likes herself just the way she is.

The conversation ran as fluidly as the tea out of the samovar’s crooked nose.

Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa.

Jealousy knows neither morality nor empathy.