Anna Akhmatova Quotes

Quotes about:

• As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future -- a terrible festival of dead leaves.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Past, Festivals, Terrible

  Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, Stanley Kunitz, Max Hayward (1997). “Избранные Стихи”, p.149, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  22 Copy quote

• My shadow serves as the friend I crave

  Anna Akhmatova

  Shadow, Crave

  92 Copy quote

• It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Soul, Painful

  49 Copy quote

• The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We’ve always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Stars, Butterfly, Eye

  40 Copy quote

• You will hear thunder and remember me, and think: she wanted storms.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Thinking, Storm, Remember

  Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, D. M. Thomas (1985). “You will hear thunder: poems”, Harvill Secker

  70 Copy quote

• Real tenderness can't be confused, It's quiet and can't be heard.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Confused, Real, Quiet

  30 Copy quote

• There is a sacred, secret line in loving which attraction and even passion cannot cross.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Love, Passion, Secret

  Jane Kenyon, Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1999). “A hundred white daffodils: essays, the Akhmatova translations, newspaper columns, notes, interviews, and one poem”, Graywolf Pr

  25 Copy quote

• I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love

  Anna Akhmatova

  Pain, And Love, Enchantment

  45 Copy quote

• Rising from the past, my shadow Is running in silence to meet me.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Running, Past, Silence

  22 Copy quote

• You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Heart, Thinking, Fire

  Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, D. M. Thomas (1985). “You will hear thunder: Akhmatova, poems”, Ohio Univ Pr

  38 Copy quote

• It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Smile, Death

  Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1989). “Selected Poems”, Dufour Editions

  16 Copy quote

• You do not know just what you've been forgiven.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Forgiven, Knows

  9 Copy quote

• Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Dream, Rest Of Your Life

  66 Copy quote

• Call me a sinner, Mock me maliciously: I was your insomnia, I was your grief.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Grief, Insomnia, Call Me

  35 Copy quote

• During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there): ‘Could you describe this?’ I said, ‘I can!’ Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Blue, Numbness, Years

  29 Copy quote

• Today I have so much to do: I must kill memory once and for all, I must turn my soul to stone, I must learn to live again. Unless ... Summer's ardent rustling is like a festival outside my window.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Summer, Memories, Soul

  Anna Akhmatova, “The Sentence”

  10 Copy quote

• Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.

  Anna Akhmatova

  People, Poetry, New Life

  5 Copy quote

• I seem to myself, as in a dream, Am accidental guest in this dreadful body.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Dream, Body, Guests

  9 Copy quote

• The secret of secrets is inside me again.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Secret

  "A land not mine, still". Poem by Anna Akhmatova, as published in "The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova" edited by Roberta Reeder and translated by Judith Hemschemeyer, 1990.

  18 Copy quote

• Your voice is wild and simple. You are untranslatable Into any one tongue.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Simple, Voice, Tongue

  24 Copy quote

• I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Garden, Lovely, Magic

  10 Copy quote

• If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, / Give me a bitter glory.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Giving, Bitter, Glory

  Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, D. M. Thomas (2006). “Poems”, Knopf Publishing Group

  24 Copy quote

• Sunset in the ethereal waves:
  I cannot tell if the day
  is ending, or the world, or if
  the secret of secrets is inside me again.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Sunset, Secret, World

  42 Copy quote

• I myself, from the very beginning, Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium Or a reflection in someone else's mirror, Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. Already I knew the list of crimes That I was destined to commit.

  Anna Akhmatova

  Dream, Reflection, Mirrors

  21 Copy quote

• All that I am hangs by a thread tonight

  Anna Akhmatova

  Tonight, Thread

  Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, Stanley Kunitz, Max Hayward (1997). “Избранные Стихи”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

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