Anna Akhmatova

"The night knows all my secrets."

"I refuse to be less than I am for the comfort of others."

"Every love story is a tragedy waiting to happen."

"The past is a country from which we can never return."

"I have learned that hope is a dangerous thing."

"What is poetry but the truth dressed in strange clothes?"

"I cannot forgive myself for being alive when so many are dead."

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

"I have danced on the edge of madness and found myself still sane."

"Every moment is both a death and a rebirth."

"The greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our suffering."

"I write because I must, not because I wish to."

"The human heart is a country with as many borders as it has days."

"In the end, all that remains is love and loss."

"I have lived through enough for ten lifetimes."

"The silence between words says more than the words themselves."

"I have learned that beauty and pain are often the same thing."

"Time is the cruelest editor of all."

"I will not apologize for the size of my heart."

"The purpose of art is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."

"I have made peace with the fact that I will never fully understand myself."

"Every scar tells a story of survival."

"I refuse to be small for anyone's convenience."

"The poet's task is to tell the truth that others are afraid to speak."

"I have learned that longing never dies, it only transforms."

"The greatest gift is to be truly seen by another soul."

"I will remember you as you were in that moment when everything was possible."

"The night is full of voices that only writers can hear."

"I have discovered that grace is not the absence of pain, but its transformation."

"To live is to be tested daily by circumstance and choice."