“People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence.”

“Art destroys silence.”

“Every poem holds the unspeakable inside it. The unsayable… The thing that you can't really say because it's too complicated. It's too complex for us. Every poem has that silence deep in the center of it.”

“For honesty is before honor; and though man must write his poems in sounding words, God's poems are printed best in the brave and silent duties of common life.”

“There is no such thing as a silent poem.”

“When I first read the dictionary, I thought it was a long poem about everything.”

“It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.”

“A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental when the poem is good, or embarrassing or absurd when it is bad — and he is not permitted to say how the good poem is good, and may never know how the bad poem is bad. It is better to write about other people's poetry.”

“Thereafter, when he himself was dead, he imagined that his poems would be published in some mysterious way, and the nation would read them for comfort in adversity, as it had read the poems of other poets before him; it was his highest wish that his poems could help those as unfortunate as himself to have patience to endure.</b”

“Silence is worse when you know it won't be broken.”