I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.

I was quite happy in Arkhangelsk.Subsequently, I was sent to a village. I liked it in its own way because it sounded to me very much like the tradition of a hired man in any world-class poem. That's what I was, a hired man. I was working for a collective farm.

For darkness restores what light cannot repair.

...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there - well or poorly.

As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of state.

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