Time has a way of demonstrating that the most stubborn are the most intelligent.
Envy is an insult to oneself.
In Russia all tyrants believe poets to be their worst enemies.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood. In their callous rage, all anti-Semites must hate me now as a Jew. For that reason I am a true Russian.
Give me a mystery – just a plain and simple one – a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery – just one!
Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.
He who is conceived in a cage yearns for the cage.
Only when the sense of the pain of others begins does man begin.
Literature has to serve as a moral control of politics.
Why is it that right-wing bastards always stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, while liberals fall out among themselves?
Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.
A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
