"I was overjoyed when I read Yevtushenko's "Babi Yar"; the poem astounded me. It astounded thousands of people…People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence."

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

“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can be only a footnote.”

“I love sport because I love life, and sport is one of the basic joys of life”

“do not like poems that resemble hay compressed into a geometrically perfect cube. I like it when the hay, unkempt, uncombed, with dry berries mixed in it, thrown together gaily and freely, bounces along atop some truck—and more, if there are some lovely and healthy lasses atop the hay—and better yet if the branches catch at the hay, and some of it tumbles to the road.”

“My dear friend Yevtushenko has, I claim, an ego that can crack crystal at a distance of twenty feet.”

“In general, in poetry and literature, I am among those people who believe that too much is indispensable.”