I think that if poetry is not a personal act, it's a pamphlet.

People ask me why I am a feminist. Because I am a woman of freedom and equality and it is not possible to have freedom in the world when half of humanity has no rights. Because we are more than half of humanity. There are more women than men. This is not a fight of so-called "minorities."

I think that all my books are political, I think that I have a political body of work. I am essentially a political woman, but above all I am a poet. I am a poetess.

What do I think of Pussy Riot actions? The act can be extremely positive if it is an act to call attention to the fact that things in their country are really bad for women, otherwise it is purely a media event that only obfuscates women's struggle.

I don't offend anyone, I don't use anyone, I don't exploit anyone.

I think that one of the tasks of feminist women - mainly women of culture - in our time is to seek out those women who were only forgotten because they were women.

As a journalist, I never isolated myself. I was a journalist at a daily newspaper and every day I went out on the street. Every day I had contact with people. I interviewed the most important writers of the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first century, from Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, and Marguerite Yourcenar to Christa Wolf.