Quote

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.

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
Existence
Recall
Keep
Recalls
Past
Attempting
Feel
Failures
Feels
Grasp
Trying
Basketball
Clutching
Make
Meaning
Sliding
Like
Baby
Palms

More quotes by 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.
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I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
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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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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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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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Bad literature is a form of treason.
Joseph Brodsky
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If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
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Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.
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When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
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For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
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My poems getting published in Russia doesn't make me feel in any fashion, to tell you the truth. I'm not trying to be coy, but it doesn't tickle my ego.
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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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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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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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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.
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.
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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
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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.
Joseph Brodsky