Anna Akhmatova

"To create is to birth something from the void of despair."

"The night holds secrets that daylight cannot reveal."

"I have learned to make peace with my own ghost."

"The voice of conscience is the voice of God within."

"To endure suffering is to become more human than before."

"The written word is immortal; the spoken word fades away."

"In the crucible of pain, we are refined into our truest selves."

"The poet sees what others are afraid to acknowledge."

"I have lived not once, but many times, in the lives of others."

"The future is merely the past dressed in different clothes."

"To love is to surrender the illusion of safety."

"The truth will set you free, but first it will break your heart."

"I have taught myself to live simply and wisely, to look at the sky and pray to God, and to wander long before evening in the fields of my homeland."

"Punishment comes to us not for the evil deeds we have committed, but for those we could have prevented."

"Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold, death's great black wing scrapes the earth."

"Perhaps this cruelty is from God, and this is the way to show His love."

"I don't know what you are, but I love you."

"The word brought about its own pain; for that pain, it must answer."

"In the depths of my heart lies a wound—I am afraid to touch it."

"Memory marks us without our consent."

"How many stones have been cast at me, yet I am still standing."

"The city has forgotten what I was, and now it sees only what I have become."

"I walk beside you on this terrible road, but I do not look at you."

"The most terrible thing we can imagine is to be forgotten completely."

"In solitude, I discovered my truest companion—silence."

"Your name is a prayer on my lips when I wake in the morning."

"Art demands honesty or it becomes decoration."

"I have learned that patience is not the absence of action, but right action in due time."

"The weight of words can crush mountains or move them—therein lies their power."

"A poet's fate is to be misunderstood by those closest to him."