I'm A Bad Jew, A Bad Russian,

A Poet Is A Combination Of An Instrument And A Human Being In One Person, With The Former Gradually Taking Over The Latter. The Sensation Of This Takeover Is Responsible For Timbre; The Realization Of It, For Destiny.

Russian Talk Of Political Evil Is As Natural As Eating.

In Russia, The Moment A Person Opens His Mouth You Know Where He's From. There's The Uniformity Of Experience Of An Individual In Russia. When You're About 7 Years Old You Get Into School And You Get Put In This Factory Or This Bureaucracy Or Whatever. The Options Are Computable. Here It's Tremendously Diverse.

In General, With Things Unpleasant, The Rule Is: The Sooner You Hit Bottom, The Faster You Surface.

The Surest Defense Against Evil Is Extreme Individualism, Originality Of Thinking, Whimsicality, Even - If You Will - Eccentricity. That Is, Something That Can't Be Feigned, Faked, Imitated; Something Even A Seasoned Imposter Couldn't Be Happy With.