I love my poor earth because I have seen no other.

The people need poetry that will be their own secret To keep them awake forever, And bathe them in the bright-haired wave of its breathing.

Perhaps the whisper was born before lips, And the leaves in treelessness circled and flew, And those, to whom we impart our experience as bliss, Acquire their forms before we do

My turn shall also come: I sense the spreading of a wing.

Where to start? Everything cracks and shakes, The air trembles with similes, No one world's better than another; the earth moans with metaphors.

Only in Russia poetry is respected - it gets people killed.

Poetry is the plough that turns up time in such a way that the abyssal strata of time, its black earth, appear on the surface.

Logic is the kingdom of the unexpected. To think logically means to be continually amazed.

Perhaps my whisper was already born before my lips.

I was stopped in the dense Soviet wood by bandits who called themselves my judges.

A raznochinets needs no memory—it is enough for him to tell of the books he has read, and his biography is done.

Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end.

What I do is I come in the morning and get involved in the character, but I'm always very pleased to leave it at night and have my life.

I don't care if I starve.

The highest condition of the religious sentiment is when. . . the worshiper not only sees God everywhere, but sees nothing which is not full of God.

Tom Friedman says China is so awesome they make kosher pigs.

Look at light and admire its beauty. Close your eyes, and then look again: what you saw is no longer there; and what you will see later is not yet.

Did you ever really love her? Not really no. But me? Yes. Even though I have no pizzazz?

I never quite dare to believe I'm brave enough to be an artist, but I'm on the side of artists. I think of myself as a bit of a Salieri, looking with longing eyes at Mozart.

Most things I worry about never happen anyway.

Architecture is not about space but about time.