QUOTES by Joseph Brodsky
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Because civilizations are finite, in the life of each of them there comes a moment when the center ceases to hold. What keeps them at such times from disintegration is not legions but language.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
To put it mildly, nothing can be turned and worn inside out with greater ease than one's notion of social justice, public conscience, a better future, etc.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.'
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
Regardless of whether one is a writer or a reader, one's task consists first of all in mastering a life that is one's own, not imposed or prescribed from without, no matter how noble its appearance may be. For each of us is issued but one life, and we know full well how it all ends.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
Nothing convinces an artist more of the arbitrariness of the means to which he resorts to attain a goal - however permanent it may be - than the creative process itself, the process of composition.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
I started to write when I was eighteen or nineteen. However, until I was about twenty-three, I didn't take it that seriously.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
It would be enough for me to have the system of a jury of twelve versus the system of one judge as a basis for preferring the U.S. to the Soviet Union. I would prefer the country you can leave to the country you cannot.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
I don't suppose that I know more about life than anyone of my age, but it seems to me that, in the capacity of an interlocutor, a book is more reliable than a friend or a beloved.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
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.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
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.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
No man-made system is perfect, and the system of oppression is no exception. It is subject to fatigue, to cracks, which you are the likelier to discover the longer your term.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of conscience, of thinking, of comprehending the universe.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
A man is, after all, what he loves. But one always feels cornered when asked to explain why one loves this or that person, and what for. In order to explain it - which inevitably amounts to explaining oneself - one has to try to love the object of one's attention a little bit less.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
The unbearableness of the future is easier to face than that of the present if only because human foresight is much more destructive than anything that the future can bring about.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
I belong to Russian literature, but I am an American citizen, and I think it's the best possible combination.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
This assumption that the blue collar crowd is not supposed to read it, or a farmer in his overalls is not to read poetry, seems to be dangerous if not tragic.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
The more one reads poetry, the less tolerant one becomes of any sort of verbosity, be that in political or philosophical discourse, be that in history, social studies or the art of fiction.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
By and large, prisons are survivable, though hope is indeed what you need least upon entering here; a lump of sugar would be more useful.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
By writing... in the language of his society, a poet takes a large step toward it. It is society's job to meet him halfway, that is, to open his book and read it.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
Beginning a poem, the poet as a rule doesn't know the way it's going to come out, and at times, he is very surprised by the way it turns out, since often it turns out better than he expected; often his thought carries further than he reckoned.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed, genetic - goal.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
The concept of historical necessity is the product of rational thought and arrived in Russia by the Western route. The idea of the noble savage, of an inherently good human nature hampered by bad institutions, of the ideal state, of social justice and so forth - none of these originated or blossomed on the banks of the Volga.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
It is almost a rule that the more complex a man is, the simpler his billing. A person with a retrospective ability gone rampant often would be called an historian. Similarly, one to whom reality doesn't seem to make sense gets dubbed a philosopher.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
I haven't shifted language. I'm writing in English because I like it. I'm a sucker for the language, but the good old poems I'm still writing in Russian.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
A person sets out to write a poem for a variety of reasons: to win the heart of his beloved; to express his attitude toward the reality surrounding him, be it a landscape or a state; to capture his state of mind at a given instant; to leave - as he thinks at that moment - a trace on the earth.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
What provides you with subject matter is your own language - and that's all.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
My idea is simply - is very simple - is that the books of poetry should be published in far greater volume and be distributed in far greater volume, in far more substantial manner. You can sell in supermarkets very cheaply. In paperbacks. You can sell in drugstores.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like claiming to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it is not widely distributed.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
I remember myself, age five, sitting on a porch overlooking a very muddy road. The day was rainy. I was wearing rubber boots, yellow - no, not yellow, green - and for all I know, I'm still there.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
I simply think that water is the image of time, and every New Year's Eve, in somewhat pagan fashion, I try to find myself near water, preferably near a sea or an ocean, to watch the emergence of a new helping, a new cupful of time from it.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky
One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.
Quote by -Joseph Brodsky