Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.

You took my freedom away a long time ago and you can't give it back because you haven't got it yourself.

It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them. Grant, O Lord, that I may not break as I strike! Let me not fall from Thy hand!

A poet cannot be a Party member ... without paying the price.

In our age, when technology is gaining control over life, when material well-being is considered the most important goal, when the influence of religion has been weakened everywhere in the world, a special responsibility lies upon the writer.

... but it is human to be outraged by injustice, even to the point of courting destruction!

Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.