Osip Mandelstam

Quotes

• “One cannot launch a new history — the idea is altogether unthinkable; there would not be the continuity and tradition. T...”
• “I do not know how it is elsewhere, but here, in this country, poetry is a healing, life-giving thing, and people have no...”
• “The Armenian language cannot be worn out; its boots are stone. Well, certainly, the thick-walled words, the layers of ai...”
• “Where to start?Everything cracks and shakes,The air trembles with similes,No one world's better than another;the earth m...”
• “The people need poetry that will be their own secretTo keep them awake forever,And bathe them in the bright-haired wave ...”
• “The wolfhound century leaps at my shoulders,But I am no wolf by blood.”
• “Only in Russia poetry is respected--it gets people killed.”
• “The earth is buzzing with metaphor”