Yevgeny Yevtushenko

“When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.”

“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.”

“How can the confessor teach/ those who are lost and sick at heart,/ when he himself, among the sinners,/ is worst, and most forsaken?/ It is only a game we play/ with other people's sins./ B...”

“Why is it that right-wing bastards always stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, while liberals fall out among themselves?”

“In my blood there is no Jewish blood. In their callous rage, all anti-Semites must hate me now as a Jew. For that reason I am a true Russian.”

“Time has a way of demonstrating that the most stubborn are the most intelligent.”

“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!”

“Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.”