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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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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
Separation
Speed
Sound
Comes
Light
Whole
Love

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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.
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The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.
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Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
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I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
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I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
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An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.
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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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Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it on the contrary, throw it wide open.
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In the end, like the Almighty Himself, we make everything in our image, for want of a more reliable model our artifacts tell more about ourselves than our confessions.
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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.
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Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
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When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.
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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.
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I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.
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