""No! No! Not one! Never just one! Even the wisest judgment can become unjust, willful, arrogant, when measured against life. And the worst -- you see -- the worst thing under the sun -- is the violation of one person by another." -- Anneliese, p. 117"

""But this danger you mention?" he went on. "Tell me, where is there beauty that isn't at the same time in danger? -- and when wasn't the greatest beauty also the greatest danger! -- And mind you: this know-it-all attitude and drive to control, the 'firm hand' you were talking about -- all that arrogance, especially of the usual, masculine kind, will go to pieces trying to deal with this! That approach is only best right from the start and with women who are no threat to anyone. But -- please tell me -- what's so great about a manly stance that has to look out for itself, that's so anxiously self-defensive?" -- Marcus, p. 180"

""Don't you think that a great yearning is like the birds' heading south -- a sign that somewhere life is in bloom?" -- Georg ("A Death"), p. 173"

"I think faith is important, it’s like a certain spine that you have. … It allows you to see things in a different light. To be calmer in certain situations, to be stronger in other situations, to be able to not always judge other people, to look first at yourself. And I think it’s an important inspiration for my creative work."

"Of course our society in general always presents us with different challenges, and it’s easier to be not who we are but to go on the level, to go down to the level which is less human, it’s more difficult to be humans than not to be humans."

"Just thought and thought! Poor artist of the word! High priest of thought! You cannot flee; The word holds all: the world and man, Death, life, and ever-unveiled truth. (1840)"

"One of Baratynsky’s major themes was man’s alienation from nature with the rise of industrialization. In this he went against the grain of popularity at the time;"

"We are not masters of ourselves and in our days of youthful folly we hasten to give premature vows the omniscient Fate shall ridicule."

"The mysterious power of harmony Will expiate a heavy delusion And tame a revolting desire."

"Ты есть! — Природы чинъ вѣщаетъ, Гласитъ мое мнѣ сердце то, Меня мой разумъ увѣряетъ, Ты есть; — и я ужъ не ничто! Частица цѣлой я вселенной."

"Кто перед ратью будет, пылая, Ездить на кляче, есть сухари; В стуже и в зное меч закаляя, Спать на соломе, бдеть до зари; Тысячи воинств, стен и затворов С горстью россиян все побеждать?"

"Рѣка временъ въ своемъ стремленьи Уноситъ всѣ дѣла людей И топитъ въ пропасти забвенья Народы, царства и царей.А если что и остается Чрезъ звуки лиры и трубы, То вѣчности жерломъ пожрется И общей не уйдетъ судьбы!"

"Caliban fights the Taliban"

"Once a century the world is divided into before and after."

"'Sorry, we gave you a wrong life,' they said not too apologetically. 'Will you begin anew?'"

"...letters of a burning book dance in flame not every time and not every time literally."

"The century has started with the crime of the century."

"Leviathan learning to overcome time"

"...nothing else left but to watch eternity breaking up into human splinters."

"The bigger the house, the smaller the occupants."

"Polluters of void."

"The knack of living — how skilfully it kills!"

""Women don't survive here," a woman of eighty said."

"When you kill wolves people die."

"Europe is shrinking, but America is broadening."

"What shall we do after we learn what we'll do: that is the question."

"Blok was probably the greatest Russian poet since Pushkin; although internationally less well known than Rilke and Valéry, he is of their stature and importance. He revolutionized Russian versification by making use of a purely accentual technique. He knew, as so few now know, that only the poetry of suffering – whether it is a poetry of joy or not – can be great. His own poetry, for which he burnt himself out, demonstrates this."

"So they march with sovereign tread… Behind them limps the hungry dog, and wrapped in wild snow at their head carrying a blood-red flag soft-footed where the blizzard swirls, invulnerable where bullets crossed – crowned with a crown of snowflake pearls, a flowery diadem of frost, ahead of them goes Jesus Christ."

"What message, years of conflagration, have you: madness or hope? On thin cheeks strained by war and liberation bloody reflections still remain."

"O, my Russia! O, wife! The long road is clear to us to the point of pain. Our road – like a Tatar arrow of ancient will has pierced our breast."

"Grip your gun like a man, brother! Let's have a crack at Holy Russia, Mother Russia with her big, fat arse! Freedom, freedom! Down with the cross!"

"You don't have to be a poet, but you do have to be a citizen. Well, Mayakovsky was not a citizen, he was a lackey, who served Stalin faithfully. He added his babble to the magnification of the immortal image of the leader and teacher."

"My spirit is old; and some black lot awaits me On my long road. Some dream accurst, inveterate, suffocates me Still with its load. So young – yet hosts of dreadful thoughts appal me, Sick and opprest. Come! and from shadowy phantoms disenthral me, Friend."

"Incomprehensible rubbish."

"Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!"

"Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it."

"No gray hairs streak my soul, no grandfatherly fondness there! I shake the world with the might of my voice, and walk – handsome, twentytwoyearold."

"If you wish, I shall grow irreproachably tender: not a man, but a cloud in trousers!"

"One evening Ilyich (Lenin) wanted to see for himself how the young people were getting on in the communes. We decided to visit our young friend Varya Armand who lived in a commune for art school students. I think that we made the visit on the day Kropotkin was buried, in 1921. It was a hungry year, but the young people were filled with enthusiasm. The people in the commune slept practically on bare boards, they had neither bread nor salt. "But we do have cereals," said a radiantfaced member of the commune. With this cereal they boiled a good porridge for Ilyich. Ilyich looked at the young people, at the radiant faces of the boys and girls who crowded around him, and their joy was reflected in his face. They showed him their naive drawings, explained their meaning. and bombarded him with questions. And he, smiling, evaded answering and parried by asking questions of his own: "What do you read? Do you read Pushkin?" -- "Oh, no," said someone, "after all he was a bourgeois; we read Mayakovsky." Ilyich smiled. "I think," he said, "that Pushkin is better." After this Ilyich took a more favourable view of Mayakovsky. Whenever the poet's name was mentioned he recalled the young art students who, full of life and gladness, and ready to die for the Soviet system, were unable to find words in the contemporary language with which to express themselves, and sought the answer in the obscure verse of Mayakovsky. Later, however, Ilyich once praised Mayakovsky for the verse in which he ridiculed Soviet red tape."

"In parade deploying the armies of my pages, I shall inspect the regiments in line. Heavy as lead, my verses at attention stand, ready for death and for immortal fame."

"Agitprop sticks in my teeth too, and I'd rather compose romances for you – more profit in it and more charm. But I subdued myself, setting my heel on the throat of my own song."

"Hey, you! Heaven! Off with your hat! I am coming! Not a sound. The universe sleeps, its huge paw curled upon a star-infested ear."

"Love's ship has foundered on the rocks of life. We're quits: stupid to draw up a list of mutual sorrows, hurts and pains."

"I understand the power and the alarm of words – Not those that they applaud from theatre-boxes, but those which make coffins break from bearers and on their four oak legs walk right away."

"Mayakovsky was and is the best and most talented poet of our Soviet era. Indifference to his memory and works is a crime."

"With this man, the newness of our times was climatically and uniquely in his blood. His very strangeness was one with the strangeness of the age, an age still half unrealised."

"Love for us is no paradise of arbors — to us love tells us, humming, that the stalled motor of the heart has started to work again."

"When rowan leaves are dank and rusting And rowan berries red as blood, When in my palm the hangman's thrusting The final nail with bony thud, When, over the foul flooding river, Upon the wet grey height, I toss Before my land's grim looks, and shiver As I swing here upon the cross, Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches My dying sight to space remote; I see upon the river’s reaches Christ sailing to me in a boat."

"He stands with one foot on Mont Blanc and with the other on the Elbrus. His voice out-thunders thunder. What is the wonder that…the proportions of earthly things vanish and that no difference is left between the small and the great?…No doubt this hyperbolic style reflects in some measure the frenzy of our time. But this does not provide it with an overall artistic justification. It is impossible to out-clamour war and revolution, but it is easy to get hoarse in the attempt."

"Tramp squares with rebellious treading! Up heads! As proud peaks be seen! In the second flood we are spreading Every city on earth will be clean."