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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
Sooner
Faster
Surface
Rule
Bottom
General
Things
Unpleasant

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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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The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.
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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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When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
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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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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'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
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I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
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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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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
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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.
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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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Every life has a file, if you will.
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How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
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