Joseph Brodsky Quotes
Top 83 wise famous quotes and sayings by Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Joseph Brodsky on Wise Famous Quotes.
I am quite prepared to die here [in NY]. It doesn't matter at all. I don't know better places, or perhaps if I do I am not prepared to make a move.
When the eye fails to find beauty-alias solace-it commands the body to create it, or, failing that, adjusts itself to perceive virtue in ugliness.
After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
The delirium and horror of the East. The dusty catastrophe of Asia. Green only on the banner of the Prophet. Nothing grows here except mustaches.
The instinctive preference was to read rather than to act. No wonder our actual lives were more or less a shambles
What's happening in Russia is devoid of autobiographical interest for me. Maybe it's egocentric. Whatever it is, feel free to use it.
What paradise and vacation have in common is that you have to pay for both, and the coin is your previous life.
No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there - well or poorly.
For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the lesson of your utter insignificance.
I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet. I believe that I will return. Poets always return in flesh or on paper.
As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of state.
The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even - if you will - eccentricity.
I'm not trying to be ridiculous or funny, but it was rather pleasant to find yourself in isolation, in solitary.
If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.
What we regard as Evil is capable of a fairly ubiquitous presence if only because it tends to appear in the guise of good.
After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.
For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.
Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.
Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation.
The Last Judgement is the Last Judgement, but a human being who spent his life in Russia, has to be, without any hesitation, placed into Paradise.
Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell.
(in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy)
(in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy)
In the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.
I don't believe in that country any longer. I'm not interested. I'm writing in the language, and I like the language.
Now to die of grief
would mean, I'm afraid, to die
belatedly, while latecomers
are unwelcome, particularly in the future ...
would mean, I'm afraid, to die
belatedly, while latecomers
are unwelcome, particularly in the future ...
Of all the parts of your body, be most vigilant over your index finger, for it is blame-thirsty. A pointed finger is a victim's logo.
Robert Frost's triumph was not being at John Kennedy's inauguration ceremony, but the day when he put the last period on West-Running Brook.
The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously.