I was fortunate enough to write about things I really love, and love can be very analytic.

When you have those two languages - an analytic one like English and a synthetic, very sensual thing like Russian, you get almost a psychotic sense of humanity that permeates nearly everything. It can help you understand, and it can discourage you, because you see how little can be done.

If there is any substitute for love, it is memory

To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment.

Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.

My idea is simply - is very simple - is that the books of poetry should be published in far greater volume and be distributed in far greater volume, in far more substantial manner. You can sell in supermarkets very cheaply. In paperbacks. You can sell in drugstores.