I think of translations as passing some scholarly smell test: you can read the words of the translation and be reasonably sure of what the words are in the original.

We should be suspicious when God's call conforms so neatly to our own inclinations.

Sometimes God calls a person to unbelief in order that faith may take new forms.

Mandelstam - his gift and the untamable nature of it - was like a thorn in Stalin's brain.

I'm drawn to this range, that's for sure, but I suppose the thing that most appeals to me about Mandelstam is the sense you get from every poem that everything - the poet's very soul - is at stake.

I suppose I do believe that the greatest art consoles a wound that it creates, that art can give you the capacity to endure and respond to the pain it forces you to feel. Psychological pain, I mean.

God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering.