Anna Andrejewna Achmatowa
Anna Andrejewna Achmatowa

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the supor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers there):
"Can you describe this?"
And I

answered: "Yes, I can."
Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face.

Anna Andrejewna Achmatowa
Anna Andrejewna Achmatowa

For seventeen months I have cried aloud
calling you back to your lair.
I hurled myself at the hangman's foot.
You are my son, changed into nightmare.
Confusion occupies the world,
and I am powerless to tell
somebody brute from something human,
or on what day the word spells, "Kill!"

Ryan Adams
Ryan Adams

It's not very fashionable nowadays to have a philosophy that demands a lot of life. I tend to be drawn to people who are emotional - now they'd be called 'crazy'. Pollock, Jasper Johns, Toulouse-Lautrec. People said, 'They're off their nut!' Was Faulkner off his nut because he stayed in his house for eight months at a time writing books, and then you'd find him drunk up in a tree, making out with

some old black woman? I think that's fuckin' great!

Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie
Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie

… there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness.

Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss

Frank II had been back in the aptly named Mother Country for only a few months when a lady of his acquaintance presented him with Frank IV. Frank IV was a girl, christened Berenice. The state of coma which had ensnared Frank II for so long did not afflict Berenice, or any other of his descendants.
Another tremendous adjustment in the shared consciousness had to be made. That also had its

compensations; Frank was the first man ever really to appreciate the woman's point of view.

Mukesh Ambani
Mukesh Ambani

In the '80s, when I came in, the ground rules were made clear to me. 'Build this business from scratch, without taking anyone from Reliance.' That forced you to be very disciplined. I looked around and figured out in three months that this industry runs on heroes.

A. R. Ammons
A. R. Ammons

I write the whole poem at one sitting and then come back to it from time to time over the months or years and rework it.

Will Arnett
Will Arnett

The summer of 2000 was a real turning point for me, and I kind of got my act together and laid the bottle down and got to work, and really last five years have been the greatest five years of my life, personally and then -- as a result of that, I guess -- professionally. Six months after that, I met Amy [Poehler]. We had sort of met before, but we started dating. From the moment we met, it was the

greatest thing that ever happened to me. It was great. We didn't know what we were doing, and all of a sudden she got SNL, so we kind of decided that I guess I had to move to New York; otherwise it wasn't going to work out. So I moved back to New York and it was the greatest. It was great. Probably the best thing that's ever happened to me is Amy.

Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire

We were only together for a part of my career, and for every film we did, I did another three on my own. The studio was working me too hard. Fred would rush off for a holiday and call me and say: "Hey, ready to do another?" And I didn't have the sense to say that I was too tired. Those times were murder for me. Oh, I adored Mr. A but all the hard work… the 5 a. m. calls, the months of non-stop

dancing, singing and acting. We just worked it out and had a lot of fun and got very exhausted. And Mr A was quite divine.

David Attenborough
David Attenborough

If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation. Most do so directly, by breeding. In the few examples that don't do so by design, they do it indirectly, by helping a relative with whom they share a great number of their genes. And in as much as the legacy that human beings pass on

to the next generation is not only genetic but to a unique degree cultural, we do the same. So animals and ourselves, to continue the line, will endure all kinds of hardship, overcome all kinds of difficulties, and eventually the next generation appears. This albatross is over 30 years old, she's already a grandmother, and this year once again she has produced a chick. She will devote the next 10

months of her life looking after it. She has faced the trials of life and triumphed, for her little 2 day old chick the trials are just beginning.