I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
I simply loved all my life; loved is too strong a word, but I had a tremendous sentiment, partly conditioned, of course, by the reality of where I grew up, for the spirit of individualism, for the idea of your being on your own in a big way.
Once I stop being a citizen of the U.S.S.R., I will not stop being a Russian poet.
The mechanics of love imply some sort of bridge between the sensual and the spiritual, sometimes to the point of deification; the notion of an afterlife is implicit not only in our couplings, but also in our separations.
The blue-collar is not supposed to read Horace, nor the farmer in his overalls Montale or Marvell. Nor, for that matter, is the politician expected to know by heart Gerard Manley Hopkins or Elizabeth Bishop. This is dumb as well as dangerous.
I began to despise Lenin, even when I was in the first grade, not so much because of his political philosophy or practice... but because of his omnipresent images.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
You cannot cover a ruin with a page of 'Pravda.'
Unlike a state, a writer cannot plead the historical necessity of his actions.
