“No one has ever stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?”

“There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?”

“One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.”

“Who sleeps at night? No one is sleeping.
In the cradle a child is screaming.
An old man sits over his death, and anyone
young enough talks to his love, breathes
into her lips, looks into her eyes.”

“After a sleepless night the body gets weaker,It becomes dear and not yours - and nobody's.Just like a seraph you smile to peopleAnd arrows moan in the slow arteries.After a sleepless night the arms get weakerAnd deeply equal to you are the friend and foe.Smells like Florence in the frost, and in eachSudden sound is the whole rainbow.Tenderly light the lips, and the shadow's goldenNear the sunken eyes. Here the night has sparkedThis brilliant likeness - and from the dark nightOnly just one thing - the eyes - are growing dark.”

“The forbidden cabinet. The forbidden fruit. That fruit is—a volume, a huge blue-lilac volume with a gold inscription slantwise: Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin. I read the fat Pushkin in the cabinet with my nose in the book and on the shelf, almost in darkness and almost right up against it and even a little bit suffocated by his weight that came right into the throat, and almost blinded by the nearness of the tiny letters. I read Pushkin right into the chest and right into the brain.”

“Wings are freedom only when they are wide open in flight. On one's back they are a heavy weight.”