217 Quotes by Anna Akhmatova

This Cruel Age has deflected me...

I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.

Now no one will listen to songs. The prophesied days have begun. Latest poem of mine, the world has lost its wonder, Don't break my heart, don't ring out.

You do not know just what you've been forgiven.

During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there): ‘Could you describe this?’ I said, ‘I can!’ Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.

That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.

Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.

Mary Magdalene beat her breast and sobbed, The beloved disciple turned to stone, But where the silent Mother stood, there No one glanced and no one would have dared.

A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. "Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me...