Quote

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

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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
Person
Former
Timbre
Human
Instruments
Sensation
Humans
Responsible
Gradually
Destiny
Sensations
Poet
Instrument
Poetry
Realization
Taking
Latter
Takeover
Persons
Combination
Takeovers

More quotes by 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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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
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
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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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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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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
Joseph Brodsky
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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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When the eye fails to find beauty-alias solace-it commands the body to create it, or, failing that, adjusts itself to perceive virtue in ugliness.
Joseph Brodsky
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I'm not trying to be ridiculous or funny, but it was rather pleasant to find yourself in isolation, in solitary.
Joseph Brodsky
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I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
Joseph Brodsky
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Man is what he reads.
Joseph Brodsky
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I was quite happy in Arkhangelsk.Subsequently, I was sent to a village. I liked it in its own way because it sounded to me very much like the tradition of a hired man in any world-class poem. That's what I was, a hired man. I was working for a collective farm.
Joseph Brodsky
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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
Joseph Brodsky
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If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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Every life has a file, if you will.
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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If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
Joseph Brodsky