Vladimir Mayakovsky

"On the pavement of my trampled soul the steps of madmen weave the prints of rude crude words."

"Art must not be concentrated in dead shrines called museums. lt must be spread everywhere – on the streets, in the trams, factories, workshops, and in the workers homes."

"I want to be understood by my country, but if I fail to be understood – what then?, I shall pass through my native land to one side, like a shower of slanting rain."

"Loves ship has foundered on the rocks of life. Were quits: stupid to draw up a list of mutual sorrows, hurts and pains."

"Love for us is no paradise of arbors — to us love tells us, humming, that the stalled motor of the heart has started to work again."

"If you wish, I shall grow irreproachably tender: not a man, but a cloud in trousers!"

"In parade deploying the armies of my pages, I shall inspect the regiments in line. Heavy as lead, my verses at attention stand, ready for death and for immortal fame."

"No gray hairs streak my soul, no grandfatherly fondness there! I shake the world with the might of my voice, and walk – handsome, twentytwoyearold."

"I understand the power and the alarm of words – Not those that they applaud from theatre-boxes, but those which make coffins break from bearers and on their four oak legs walk right away."

"Hey, you! Heaven! Off with your hat! I am coming! Not a sound. The universe sleeps, its huge paw curled upon a star-infested ear."

"Tramp squares with rebellious treading! Up heads! As proud peaks be seen! In the second flood we are spreading Every city on earth will be clean."

"A rhymes … a barrel of dynamite. A line is a fuse thats lit. The line smoulders, the rhyme explodes – and by a stanza a city is blown to bits."