The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.

I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.

In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches at the faculty club. In Russia it suggests the moral force of an art practiced against the greatest personal odds, as a discipline, solitary and intense.

Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.

I'm not trying to be ridiculous or funny, but it was rather pleasant to find yourself in isolation, in solitary.

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

The delirium and horror of the East. The dusty catastrophe of Asia. Green only on the banner of the Prophet. Nothing grows here except mustaches.