The people need poetry that will be their own secret To keep them awake forever, And bathe them in the bright-haired wave of its breathing.

Perhaps the whisper was born before lips, And the leaves in treelessness circled and flew, And those, to whom we impart our experience as bliss, Acquire their forms before we do

My turn shall also come: I sense the spreading of a wing.

Where to start? Everything cracks and shakes, The air trembles with similes, No one world's better than another; the earth moans with metaphors.

Only in Russia poetry is respected - it gets people killed.

Poetry is the plough that turns up time in such a way that the abyssal strata of time, its black earth, appear on the surface.

I love my poor earth because I have seen no other.

Logic is the kingdom of the unexpected. To think logically means to be continually amazed.

Perhaps my whisper was already born before my lips.

I was stopped in the dense Soviet wood by bandits who called themselves my judges.

A raznochinets needs no memory—it is enough for him to tell of the books he has read, and his biography is done.

Too ridged an image of how things should be can completely scuttle any potential success.

Pruned my subconscious. Discovered new shoots.

The greatest power in the world is choice.

…what your life means depends on how you tell the story.

Building air castles is a harmless business as long as you don't attempt to live in them.

You don't make stupid jokes in art.

If I want to be a better person for whoever is in my life, I have to learn.

My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you're ugly too.

Aside from the equivalent of blowing up the lab or letting a pathogen escape, the only failure is spending too long or too much money to learn.

Do our government's poorly paid contract killers deserve our 'support' for blindly following orders?