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

A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.

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

Russian talk of political evil is as natural as eating.

For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the lesson of your utter insignificance.

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.

Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection.