A man should know about himself two or three things: whether he is a coward; whether he is an honest man or given to lies; whether he is an ambitious man. One should define oneself first of all in those terms, and only then in terms of culture, race, creed.

By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman, or the charlatan. In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential. For what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely the gift of speech. Poetry is not a form of entertainment and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but it is our anthropological, genetic goal. Our evolutionary, linguistic beacon.

I'm 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I'm nothing. By affiliation I'm nothing.

After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.

Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.

The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.

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.