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There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.

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
Ruins
Dear
Sight
Nothing

More quotes by Joseph Brodsky

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I don't believe in that country any longer. I'm not interested. I'm writing in the language, and I like the language.
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I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
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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.
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For darkness restores what light cannot repair.
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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.
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Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.
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In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.
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When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
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As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
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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
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The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can't win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictability of the future is what drives you crazy.
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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.
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Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
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Love itself is the most elitist of passions. It acquires its stereoscopic substance and perspective only in the context of culture, for it takes up more place in the mind than it does in bed. Outside of that setting it falls flat into one-dimensional fiction.
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There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky
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I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out which is worse the dark inside, or the darkness out.
Joseph Brodsky
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Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
Joseph Brodsky
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After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
Joseph Brodsky
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My poems getting published in Russia doesn't make me feel in any fashion, to tell you the truth. I'm not trying to be coy, but it doesn't tickle my ego.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
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