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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
Rule
Bottom
General
Things
Unpleasant
Sooner
Faster
Surface

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
Joseph Brodsky
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There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.
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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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Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.
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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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I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
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I'm neither Catholic not Protestant. Protestant sounds good but I don't think I am.
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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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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
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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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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.
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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.
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.
Joseph Brodsky
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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
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.
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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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What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
Joseph Brodsky