What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.
In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.
I didn’t want to be either the cre’me de la cre’me or a martyr. I’d rather be a novelty, especially in a democracy that doesn’t understand the language I write in.
I don’t have principles. I have nerves.
I’m not trying to be ridiculous or funny, but it was rather pleasant to find yourself in isolation, in solitary.
All the literati keep at least one imaginary friend.
In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.
The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can’t win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictability of the future is what drives you crazy.
I’m a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
In poetic thought, the role of the subconscious is played by euphony.
If I can get somewhere, I’m all right. If not, I’m miserable.
Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation.
The moment that you place blame somewhere, you undermine your resolve to change anything.
A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny.
After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed’s dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches at the faculty club. In Russia it suggests the moral force of an art practiced against the greatest personal odds, as a discipline, solitary and intense.
When the eye fails to find beauty-alias solace-it commands the body to create it, or, failing that, adjusts itself to perceive virtue in ugliness.
Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
If one’s fated to be born in Caesar’s Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore...
What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.