Boris Pasternak

Immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.

They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim.

Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it.

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.

You fall into my arms. You are the good gift of destruction's path, When life sickens more than disease. And boldness is the root of beauty. Which draws us together.

Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John.

Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one's stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life.

In view of the meaning given to this honor in the community to which I belong, I should abstain from the undeserved prize that has been awarded to me. Do not meet my voluntary refusal with ill will.

At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.