“Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?”

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

“When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?”

“I do not know how it is elsewhere, but here, in this country, poetry is a healing, life-giving thing, and people have not lost the gift of being able to drink of its inner strength. People can be killed for poetry here—a sign of unparalleled respect—because they are still capable of living by it.”

“Poetry seems especially like nothing else so much as itself. Poetry is not like, it is the very lining of the inner life.”

“If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.”