After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.

My poems getting published in Russia doesn't make me feel in any fashion, to tell you the truth. I'm not trying to be coy, but it doesn't tickle my ego.

If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.

At certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise wouldn't be retained by the mind.

Persecution mania is still around. In your writing, in your exchanges with people, meeting people who are in Russian affairs, Russian literature, etcetera.

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

On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound.