Quote

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.

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
Men
Recognition
Potential
Terror
Tragedy
Negative
Accompli
Capable
Fait
Sense
Anticipation
Always
Whereas

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On the whole, love comes with the speed of light separation, with that of sound.
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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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Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.
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Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.
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If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
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As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
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I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.
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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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When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
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A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.
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Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection.
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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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Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
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For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
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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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After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.
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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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The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
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I don't have principles. I have nerves.
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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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