Quote collection
109 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I was quite happy in Arkhangelsk.Subsequently, I was sent to a village. I liked it in its own way because it sounded to me very much like the tradition of a hired man in any world-class poem. That's what I was, a hired man. I was working for a collective farm."
"If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion."
"After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor."
"Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die."
"If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable."
"Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?"
"In the end, like the Almighty Himself, we make everything in our image, for want of a more reliable model; our artifacts tell more about ourselves than our confessions."
"Every life has a file, if you will."
"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."
"On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound."
"A man should know about himself two or three things: whether he is a coward; whether he is an honest man or given to lies; whether he is an ambitious man. One should define oneself first of all in those terms, and only then in terms of culture, race, creed."
"Man is what he reads."
"Bad literature is a form of treason."
"After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life."
"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."
"When the eye fails to find beauty-alias solace-it commands the body to create it, or, failing that, adjusts itself to perceive virtue in ugliness."
"No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there - well or poorly."
"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."
"Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair."
"Persecution mania is still around. In your writing, in your exchanges with people, meeting people who are in Russian affairs, Russian literature, etcetera."