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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Joseph Brodsky

Image
Man is what he reads.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
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
Image
I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
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
Image
In Russia, the moment a person opens his mouth you know where he's from. There's the uniformity of experience of an individual in Russia. When you're about 7 years old you get into school and you get put in this factory or this bureaucracy or whatever. The options are computable. Here it's tremendously diverse.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
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
Image
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.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
Joseph Brodsky
Image
The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
Joseph Brodsky
Image
How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
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.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
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.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
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.
Joseph Brodsky
Image
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.
Joseph Brodsky