Tsvetaeva Quotes & Sayings

Tonight - I am alone in the night,
a homeless and sleepless nun!
Tonight I hold all the keys to this
the only capital city
and lack of sleep guides me on my path.
You are so lovely, my dusky Kremlin!
Tonight I put my lips to the breast
of the whole round and warring earth.
Now I feel hair - like fur - standing on end:
the stifling winds blow straight into my soul.
Tonight I feel compassion for everyone,
those who are pitied, along with those who are kissed. — Marina Tsvetaeva

The one that burned the hottest is the first to die. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Where does such tenderness come from
And what do I do with it, you, sly,
Adolescent, vagabond singer,
Whose lashes couldn't be longer? — Marina Tsvetaeva

Women talk about love and silent about lovers, men - on the contrary: Speaking of mistresses, but are silent about love. — Marina Tsvetaeva

For the path of comets/ is the path of poets: they burn without warming,/ pick without cultivating. They are: an explosion, a breaking in — Marina Tsvetaeva

What is this gypsy passion for separation, this
readiness to rush off when we've just met?
My head rests in my hands as I
realize, looking into the night
that no one turning over our letters has
yet understood how completely and
how deeply faithless we are, which is
to say: how true we are to ourselves. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Mandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva - though their work is more "urgent" than most American poetry, seem to me to operate at a lesser charge than Mandelstam. — Christian Wiman

An Attempt at Jealousy"

How is your life with an ordinary
woman? without the god inside her?
The queen supplanted -

How do you breathe now?
Flinch, waking up?
What do you do, poor man?

How's your life with a tourist
on Earth? Her rib (do you love her?)
is it to your liking?

How do you live with cheap goods: is the market rising?
How's kissing plaster-dust?

Are you bored with her new body?
How's it going, with an earthly woman,
with no sixth sense?

Are you happy?
No? In a shallow pit - how is your life,
my beloved? Hard as mine
with another man? — Marina Tsvetaeva

And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we who never let each other sleep above it. — Marina Tsvetaeva

I have two enemies in all the world,
Two twins, inseparably fused:
The hunger of the hungry and the fullness of the full. — Marina Tsvetaeva

For the way of the comets is the poet's way. — Marina Tsvetaeva

I kissed you! I witched you!
I laugh at the afterlife's dark. — Marina Tsvetaeva

My verses are my diary. My poetry is a poetry of proper names. — Marina Tsvetaeva

There is a line from the Marina Tsvetaeva poem I'm so fond of: "In this most Christian of worlds/ All poets are Jews." What she means is that writers and artists are outside the normal flow of daily life, the normal flow of society in general. — Paul Auster

I am a shadow's shade, a lunatic, perhaps,
Of two dark moons. — Marina Tsvetaeva

What is the main thing in love? To know and to hide. To know about the one you love and to hide that you love. At times the hiding (shame) overpowers the knowing (passion). The passion for the hidden - the passion for the revealed. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Think about me lightly,
think of me, and forget. — Marina Tsvetaeva

In this most Christian of worlds all poets are Jews. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Old men, old men, old men. Medals, medals, medals. Not a brow without a furrow, not a breast without a star. My brother and husband are uniquely-young here. The grouping of young Grand Dukes doesn't count because a grouping is just what they are: a marble bas-relief. Today the whole old-age of Russia seems to have flowed into this place in homage to the eternal youth of Greece. A living lesson of history and philosophy: this is what time does with people, this is what it does
with gods. This is what time does with a man, this is what (a glance at the statues) art does. And, the last lesson: this is what time does with a man; this is what a man does with time. But because of my youth I don't think about that, I feel only a cold shudder. ("The Opening of the Museum") — Marina Tsvetaeva

After a sleepless night the body gets weaker,
It becomes dear and not yours - and nobody's.
Just like a seraph you smile to people
And arrows moan in the slow arteries.
After a sleepless night the arms get weaker
And deeply equal to you are the friend and foe.
Smells like Florence in the frost, and in each
Sudden sound is the whole rainbow.
Tenderly light the lips, and the shadow's golden
Near the sunken eyes. Here the night has sparked
This brilliant likeness - and from the dark night
Only just one thing - the eyes - are growing dark. — Marina Tsvetaeva

I will win you away from every earth, from every sky,
For the woods are my place of birth, and the place to die,
For while standing on earth I touch it with but one foot,
For I'll sing your worth as nobody could or would. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Somewhere in the night a
human being is drowning. — Marina Tsvetaeva

I do not speak. I smoke. Throat tight, as if fingers are squeezing it. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Your name is a -- bird in my hand
a piece of -- ice on the tongue
one single movement of the lips.
Your name is: five signs,
a ball caught in flight, a
silver bell in the mouth

a stone, cast in a quiet pool
makes the splash of your name, and
the sound is in the clatter of
night hooves, loud as a thunderclap
or it speaks straight into my forehead,
shrill as the click of a cocked gun.

Your name -- how impossible, it
is a kiss in the eyes on
motionless eyelashes, chill and sweet.
Your name is a kiss of snow
a gulp of icy spring water, blue
as a dove. About your name is: sleep. — Marina Tsvetaeva

My favorite mode of communication is in the world beyond: a dream, to see in a dream. My second favorite is correspondence. — Marina Tsvetaeva

For the spell is older than experience. For the tale is older than the record. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Wings are freedom only when they are wide open in flight. On one's back they are a heavy weight. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Amidst the dust of bookshops, wide dispersed
And never purchased there by anyone,
Yet similar to precious wines, my verse can wait
Its time will come. — Marina Tsvetaeva

(Everyday life is like a sack: with holes. And you carry it anyway.) — Marina Tsvetaeva

The eclipses of
poets are not foretold in the calender. — Marina Tsvetaeva

One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on your own desk. — Marina Tsvetaeva

An amazing observation: it is precisely for feelings that one needs time, not for thought ... Feelings, obviously, are more demanding than thought. — Marina Tsvetaeva

The forbidden cabinet. The forbidden fruit. That fruit is - a volume, a huge blue-lilac volume with a gold inscription slantwise: Collected Works of A.S. Pushkin. I read the fat Pushkin in the cabinet with my nose in the book and on the shelf, almost in darkness and almost right up against it and even a little bit suffocated by his weight that came right into the throat, and almost blinded by the nearness of the tiny letters. I read Pushkin right into the chest and right into the brain. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Previously, everything that I love was called
I, now it's
You. But it's the same thing. — Marina Tsvetaeva

I'm kissing you now - across
The gap of a thousand years. — Marina Tsvetaeva

However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest. We are all wolves of the dense forest of Eternity. — Marina Tsvetaeva

What shall I do, singer and first-born, in a
world where the deepest black is grey,
and inspiration is kept in a thermos?
with all this immensity
in a measured world? — Marina Tsvetaeva

I opened my veins. Unstoppably life spurts out with no remedy. Now I set out bowls and plates. Every bowl will be shallow. Every plate will be small. And overflowing their rims, into the black earth, to nourish the rushes unstoppably without cure, gushes poetry ... — Marina Tsvetaeva

Fall asleep then. Sleep. And vanish. — Marina Tsvetaeva

In you, I see the heroines of Shakespeare's tragedies.
You, unhappy lady, were
never saved by anybody. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Don't you know no one can escape the power of creatures reaching out with breath alone? — Marina Tsvetaeva

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book? — Marina Tsvetaeva

I refuse to be. In
the madhouse of the inhuman
I refuse to live.
With the wolves of the market place
I refuse to howl ... — Marina Tsvetaeva

It's an abominable fallacy that suffering makes for greater art. Suffering blinds, deafens, ruins, and often kills. Osip Mandelstam was a great poet before the revolution. So was Anna Akhmatova, so was Marina Tsvetaeva. They would have become what they became even if none of the historical events that befell Russia in this century had taken place: because they were gifted. Basically, talent doesn't need history. — Joseph Brodsky

At the skin, my blood calls out to
your heart, my whole sky craves
an island of tenderness.
My rivers tilt towards you. — Marina Tsvetaeva

I have two foes in the world, twins inextricably interrelated -- the hunger of the hungry and the glut of the glutted! — Marina Tsvetaeva

Black as
the centre of an eye, the centre, a blackness
that sucks at light. I love your vigilance
Night, first mother of songs, give me the voice to sing of you
in those fingers lies the bridle of the four winds.
Crying out, offering words of homage to you, I am
only a shell where the ocean is still sounding.
But I have looked too long into human eyes.
Reduce me now to ashes
Night, like a black sun. — Marina Tsvetaeva

My desk, most loyal friend thank you. You've been with me on every road I've taken. My scar and my protection. — Marina Tsvetaeva

This is where I live.
- I wonder if you still love me? — Marina Tsvetaeva

How quiet the writing, how noisy the printing. — Marina Tsvetaeva

After a night of insomnia the body gets weaker,
Becomes dear but no one's - not even your own. — Marina Tsvetaeva

Bullets they took from us, they took our rifles
Minerals they took, and comrades too:
But while our mouths have spittle in them
The whole country is still armed. — Marina Tsvetaeva