If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.

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

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.

This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.

Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.

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.

The moment that you place blame somewhere, you undermine your resolve to change anything.