He who is conceived in a cage yearns for the cage.

When there is freedom of speech, I’ve found that the majority of people really have nothing to say.

Everything I do, I do on the principle of Russian borscht. You can throw everything into it beets, carrots, cabbage, onions, everything you want. What’s important is the result, the taste of the borscht.

A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.

True sport is always a duel, a duel with nature, with one’s own fear, with one’s own fatigue, a duel in which the body and the mind are strengthened.

Only when the sense of the pain of others begins does man begin.

Give me a mystery – just a plain and simple one – a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery – just one!

Envy is an insult to oneself.

There is no need to fear the strong. All one needs is to know the method of overcoming them. There is a special jujitsu for every strong man.

Character begins to form at the first pinch of anxiety about ourselves.