“During the last years of Mayakovski’s life, when all poetry had ceased to exist . . . literature had stopped.”

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.

And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?

Mother Russia is on the move, she can’t stand still, she’s restless and can’t find rest, she’s talking and she can’t stop.

As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.

How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?

If it’s so painful to love and absorb electricity, how much more painful it is to be a woman, to be the electricity, to inspire love.

They don’t ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

Oh, what a love it was, utterly free, unique, like nothing else on earth! Their thoughts were like other people’s songs.

Immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.

Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don’t love it sufficiently.

The whole wide world is a cathedral; I stand inside, the air is calm, And from afar at times there reaches My ear the echo of a psalm.

We must discover security within ourselves.

That’s metaphysics, my dear fellow. It’s forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won’t take it.

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.

The unarmed power of naked truth.