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The poets who have written the best poems about war seem to be the poets whose countries have experienced an invasion or vicious dictatorships.

My poems getting published in Russia doesn't make me feel in any fashion, to tell you the truth. I'm not trying to be coy, but it doesn't tickle my ego.

No poetry that I'm aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it.

The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.

Although I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet.

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

Having spent the greater part of my life under a Communist dictatorship, I am very familiar with the Bolshevik mentality according to which an author in general, and an eminent author in particular, is always guilty, and must be punished accordingly.