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There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
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
Education
Illiteracy
Books
Banned
Reading
Censorship
Book
Crimes
Burning
Worse
Ignorance
Censoring
Crime
Censored
More quotes by Joseph Brodsky
I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.
Joseph Brodsky
In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.
Joseph Brodsky
Bad literature is a form of treason.
Joseph Brodsky
Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
Joseph Brodsky
For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
Joseph Brodsky
The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
Joseph Brodsky
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
An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.
Joseph Brodsky
After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
Joseph Brodsky
Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.
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.
Joseph Brodsky
Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.
Joseph Brodsky
I don't have principles. I have nerves.
Joseph Brodsky
A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre the realization of it, for destiny.
Joseph Brodsky
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
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
Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture and the people. They've been stolen from the people and now the stolen things are being returned to their owners, but I don't think their owners should be grateful to receive them.
Joseph Brodsky
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
Man is what he reads.
Joseph Brodsky
I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
Joseph Brodsky
