I’ve cut open my veins: irrevocably,
Irreplaceably life is gushing.
Bring forth basins and bowls!
Any bowl will prove too small
Any basin – shallow.

Filling up and overly
Onto the earth, reeds purging.
Inconceivably, irrevocably,
Irreplaceably, verse is surging.

– Marina Tsvetaeva (trans. by Andrey Kneller)

“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, "Pushkin and Pugachev"

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


– Marina Tsvetaeva, from "I Know the Truth" (trans. Elaine Feinstein)