This week's NEW YORKER has this snippet worth sharing. It's part of a 1964 transcript from the trial of one Josef Brodsky, a twenty-three-year-old poet arrested by the KGB and charged with "malicious parasitism."
JUDGE: And what is your profession?
BRODSKY: Poet. Poet and translator.
JUDGE: And who told you that you were a poet? Who assigned you that rank?
BRODSKY: No one. (Non-confrontationally.) Who assigned me to the human race?
JUDGE: And did you study for this?
BRODSKY: For what?
JUDGE: To become a poet. Did you try to attend a school where they train [poets]…. where they teach….
BRODSKY: I don't think it comes from education.
JUDGE: From what, then?
BRODSKY: I think it's….(at a loss)…. from God.