I'm an educated man, the prisons I know are subtle ones.

In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.

The truth is we never stop being children, terrible children covered in sores and knotty veins and tumors and age spots, but ultimately children, in other words we never stop clinging to life because we are life.

When you die of sorrow it's as if you've broken all the bones in your body, bruised yourself all over, cracked your skull. That's sorrow.

Literature is the product of a strange rain of blood, sweat, semen, and tears.

In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats

That's a pretty story,' said Afanasievna as she let go of Ansky's genitals. 'A pity I'm too old and have seen to much to believe it.' It has nothing to do with belief,' said Ansky, 'it has to do with understanding, and then changing.