I look up to heaven only when I want to sneeze.

I was as happy as a fish in water, and I could have stayed in that room for ever, have never left that place.

I must say, though, that a man who has staked his whole life on the card of a woman's love and who, when that card is trumped, falls to pieces and lets himself go to the dogs -- a fellow like that is not a man, not a male. You say he's unhappy -- you know best. But all the nonsense hasn't been taken out of him yet. I'm sure he really believes he's a smart fellow just because he reads that rag Galignani and saves a muzhik from a flogging once a month.

What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.

A son is like a lopped off branch. As a falcon he comes when he wills and goes where he lists.

We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we're barely past childhood, we set to work to cultivate them, those unfortunate personalities.

That is what poetry can do. It speaks to us of what does not exist, which is not only better than what exists, but even more like the truth.