Quotes by Anna Akhmatova

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me . . . and asked me in a whisper . . . "Can you describe this?" And I said: "I can."

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot survivor of that time, that place.

I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed . . . here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.

That was a time when only the dead could smile.

And from my motionless bronze-lidded sockets may the melting snow, like teardrops, slowly trickle and a prison dove coo somewhere, over and over, as the ships sail softly down the flowing Neva.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, Who suffered death because she chose to turn.

Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.