You cannot cover a ruin with a page of 'Pravda.'
Yevtushenko is a high member of his country's establishment, and he lies terribly about the United States to his Russian readers.
Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
Whenever one pulls the trigger in order to rectify history's mistake, one lies. For history makes no mistakes, since it has no purpose.
What your foes do derives its significance or consequence from the way you react.
What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.
What provides you with subject matter is your own language - and that's all.
What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
Weaknesses have a certain function in a poem... Some strategy in order to pave the reader's way to the impact of this or that line.
Venice is eternity itself.
Unlike life, a work of art never gets taken for granted it is always viewed against its precursors and predecessors.
Unlike a state, a writer cannot plead the historical necessity of his actions.
Unfortunately, a human being is able to comprehend only that amount of evil which he is able to commit himself.
Tyranny will make an entire population into readers of poetry.
Translation is not original creation - that is what one must remember. In translation, some loss is inevitable.
For a writer only one form of patriotism exists his attitude toward language.
This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.
A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.
Bad literature is a form of treason.
Cherish your human connections your relationships with friends and family.
Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.
I started to write when I was eighteen or nineteen. However, until I was about twenty-three, I didn't take it that seriously.
I like the idea of isolation. I like the reality of it. You realize what you are... Not that the knowledge is inevitably rewarding.
For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.'
After the last line of a poem, nothing follows except literary criticism.
Contrary to popular belief, the outskirts are not where the world ends - they are precisely where it begins to unfurl.
I remember rather little of my life, and what I do remember is of small consequence.
