Mandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva - though their work is more "urgent" than most American poetry, seem to me to operate at a lesser charge than Mandelstam.

Mandelstam was an artistic genius, the sort that any century produces only a handful of.

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

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

Wonder is the precondition for all wisdom.

One of the ways in which I feel close to God is writing poetry.

Art is so often better at theology than theology is.