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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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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
Unpleasant
Sooner
Faster
Surface
Rule
Bottom
General
Things

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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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The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
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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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I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out which is worse the dark inside, or the darkness out.
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I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside.
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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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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.
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For darkness restores what light cannot repair.
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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.
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There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.
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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
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Man is what he reads.
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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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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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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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