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

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.

The whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning.

An unshared happiness is not happiness.

The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say.