"He has a clear style and has had much courage – as in his poem "Babi Yar", a memorial to the Jews murdered by the Nazis. But he is no more than a talented poetaster – which is quite obvious to all but Western journalists – and it would be foolish to consider him as more than a skilful publicist."

“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.”