One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk.

A shoe's material - leather - is calculable and finite. work of art's material (not sound, not word, not stone, not canvas, but spirit) is incalculable and infinite. There are no shoes once for always. Every last line of Sappho is once for always. This is why (calculability of material) boots held by the bootmaker are in better hands than are poems in the hand of the critic. There are no misunderstood boots, but how many misunderstood poems!

A poet's marriage to his time is a forced marriage. A marriage of which - as of any suffered violence - he is ashamed, and from which he tries to tear loose. Poets of the past tear into the past, those of the present into the future, as if time were less time for not being my own! All Soviet poetry is a stake on the future. Solely Mayakovsky, this zealot of his own conscience, this convict of the present day, came to love this present day; overcame, that is, the poet in himself.

- Why are your poems so different from one another?- Because the years are different.

Под рокот гражданских бурь,В лихую годину,Даю тебе имя — мир,В наследье — лазурь.Отыйди, отыйди, Враг!Храни, Триединый,Наследницу вечных благМладенца Ирину!8 сентября 1918To clamour of civil strife,in times that are evil,I give you a name that's - peace,an heirloom - blue skies,Get thee hence, Satan! - So preserve, O Redeemer, from whom all blessings flow,the infant Irina!