Andrey Voznesensky

"Everything's sliding apart. Yet, "Long live everything!" For the art of creation Is older than the art of killing."

"It's shameful to spot a lie and not to name it, shameful to name it and then to shut your eyes, shameful to call a funeral a wedding and play the fool at funerals besides."

"I am Goya of the bare field, by the enemy's beak gouged till the craters of my eyes gape I am grief I am the tongue of war, the embers of cities on the snows of the year 1941 I am hunger."

"I have hurled westward the ashes of the uninvited guest! and hammered stars into the unforgetting sky – like nails I am Goya."

"Along a parabola life like a rocket flies, Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow."

"The urge to kill, like the urge to beget, Is blind and sinister. Its craving is set Today on the flesh of a hare: tomorrow it can Howl the same way for the flesh of a man."

"Akhmatova's seeming successor as the best living Russian poet is Voznesensky. His talent is dazzling. He has the gift of fresh, witty perception, works with unusual images and modern rhythms. His poetry is marvelously dynamic."

"With good reason, Voznesensky is a hero to all those in the Soviet Union who want their poets to tell them the truth. But at the risk of his career, freedom, and perhaps even his life, he has never been able to do much more than drop hints."