Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Envy is an insult to oneself.

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

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

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.

Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hell with it, who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy.

Justice is like a train that is nearly always late.

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

Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.

In Russia all tyrants believe poets to be their worst enemies.

Only when the sense of the pain of others begins does man begin.

Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.

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!

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

All values in this world are more or less questionable, but the most important thing in life is human kindness.

Literature has to serve as a moral control of politics.

He who is conceived in a cage yearns for the cage.