Quote

My shadow serves as the friend I crave

Anna Akhmatova

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anna Akhmatova
Age: 76 †
Born: 1889
Born: June 23
Died: 1966
Died: March 5
Author
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Poet
Translator
Writer
Odesa
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko
Anna Achmatova
Anna Ahmatova
Anna Gorenko
Anna Andreevna Gorenko
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova
Serves
Shadow
Friend
Crave

More quotes by Anna Akhmatova

Image
And this tenderness was not like That which a certain poet At the beginning of the century called true And, for some reason, quiet. No, not at all— It rang out, like the first waterfall, It crunched like the crust of bluish ice And it prayed with a swanlike voice, And it broke down right before our eyes.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
A loss, but who still mourns the breath of one woman, or laments one wife? Though my heart never can forget, how, for one look, she gave up her life.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
And it seemed to me that there were fires Flying till dawn without number And I never found out things-those Strange eyes of his-what colour? Everything trembling and singing and Were you my enemy or my friend, Winter was it or summer?
Anna Akhmatova
Image
I seem to myself, as in a dream, Am accidental guest in this dreadful body.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity and at the bottom of it all: only love poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love
Anna Akhmatova
Image
It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
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.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
A choir of angels glorified the hour, the vault of heaven was dissolved in fire. Father, why hast Thou forsaken me? Mother, I beg you, do not weep for me.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
Mary Magdalene beat her breasts and sobbed, His dear disciple, stone-faced, stared. His mother stood apart. No other looked into her secret eyes. Nobody dared.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
But here, in the murk of conflagration, where scarcely a friend is left to know we, the survivors, do not flinch from anything, not from a single blow. Surely the reckoning will be made after the passing of this cloud. We are the people without tears, straighter than you ... more proud.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
The word dropped like a stone on my still living breast. Confess: I was prepared, am somehow ready for the test.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
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.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
Sunset in the ethereal waves: I cannot tell if the day is ending, or the world, or if the secret of secrets is inside me again.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
You will hear thunder and remember me, and think: she wanted storms.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
... he is rewarded with a form of eternal childhood, with the bounty and vigilance of the stars, the whole world was his inheritance and he shared it with everyone.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
But Fear and the Muse in turn guard the place Where the banished poet has gone And the night that comes with quickened pace Is ignorant of dawn.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and our former riches.
Anna Akhmatova
Image
I have long had this premonition of a bright day and a deserted house
Anna Akhmatova