Speed, the pace of the present, cannot be measured by subways or skyscrapers, but only by the cheerful grass thrusting itself forth from under city s… - Osip Mandelstam

One often hears: that is good but it belongs to yesterday. But I say: yesterday has not yet been born. It has not yet really existed. I want Ovid, Pushkin, and Catullus to live once more, and I am not satisfied with the historical Ovid, Pushkin, and Catullus.

The October Revolution could not but influence my work since it took away my "biography," my sense of individual significance. I am grateful to it, however, for once and for all putting an end to my spiritual security and to a cultural life supported by unearned cultural income... I feel indebted to the Revolution, but I offer it gifts for which it still has no need. The question about what a writer should be is completely incomprehensible to me: to answer it would be tantamount to inventing a writer, that is, to writing his works for him.

Cultural values ornament the State, endowing it with color, form, and, if you will, even gender. Inscriptions on State buildings, tombs, and gateways insure the State against the ravages of time.