"Literature has to serve as a moral control of politics."

"Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful."

"Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers."

"Only when the sense of the pain of others begins does man begin."

"I love sport because I love life, and sport is one of the basic joys of life."

"Why is it that right-wing bastards always stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, while liberals fall out among themselves?"

"Give me a mystery - just a plain and simple one - a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery - just one!"

"Time has a way of demonstrating that the most stubborn are the most intelligent."

"In my blood there is no Jewish blood. In their callous rage, all anti-Semites must hate me now as a Jew. For that reason I am a true Russian."

"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote."

"Justice is like a train that is nearly always late."

"In Russia all tyrants believe poets to be their worst enemies."

"Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hell with it, who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy."

"Envy is an insult to oneself."