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For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

Joseph Brodsky

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Joseph Brodsky
Age: 55 †
Born: 1940
Born: May 24
Died: 1996
Died: January 25
Author
Dramaturge
Essayist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
St. Petersburg
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky
Patriotism
Exists
Toward
Writer
Attitude
Language
Form

More quotes by Joseph Brodsky

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Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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I didn't want to be either the cre`me de la cre`me or a martyr. I'd rather be a novelty, especially in a democracy that doesn't understand the language I write in.
Joseph Brodsky
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Tragedy, as you know, is always a fait accompli, whereas terror always has to do with anticipation, with man's recognition of hisown negative potential--with his sense of what he is capable of.
Joseph Brodsky
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The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even - if you will - eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.
Joseph Brodsky
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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
Joseph Brodsky
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I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
Joseph Brodsky
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If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
Joseph Brodsky
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There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky
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What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
Joseph Brodsky
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On the whole, love comes with the speed of light separation, with that of sound.
Joseph Brodsky
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The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously.
Joseph Brodsky
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If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.
Joseph Brodsky
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A man should know about himself two or three things: whether he is a coward whether he is an honest man or given to lies whether he is an ambitious man. One should define oneself first of all in those terms, and only then in terms of culture, race, creed.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.
Joseph Brodsky