If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore.

I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet. I believe that I will return. Poets always return in flesh or on paper.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation.

Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.