Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

I love you wildly, insanely, infinitely.

Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Soloviev or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth, and they shun those whose sole concern is not the truth.

Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades.

No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.