A raznochinets needs no memory—it is enough for him to tell of the books he has read, and his biography is done.

- Osip Mandelstam

I love my poor earth because I have seen no other.

- Osip Mandelstam

Where to start? Everything cracks and shakes, The air trembles with similes, No one world's better than another; the earth moans with metaphors.

- Osip Mandelstam

The people need poetry that will be their own secret To keep them awake forever, And bathe them in the bright-haired wave of its breathing.

- Osip Mandelstam

Poetry is the plough that turns up time in such a way that the abyssal strata of time, its black earth, appear on the surface.

- Osip Mandelstam

I was stopped in the dense Soviet wood by bandits who called themselves my judges.

- Osip Mandelstam

And I walk out of space Into an overgrown garden of values, And tear up seeming stability And self-comprehension of causes. And your, infinity, textb…

- Osip Mandelstam

My turn shall also come: I sense the spreading of a wing.

- Osip Mandelstam

Only in Russia poetry is respected - it gets people killed.

- Osip Mandelstam