Quote

Robert Frost's triumph was not being at John Kennedy's inauguration ceremony, but the day when he put the last period on West-Running Brook.

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
Brooks
Periods
Frost
West
Kennedy
Lasts
Robert
Last
Ceremony
Running
Triumph
John
Brook
Inauguration
Period

More quotes by Joseph Brodsky

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In the end, like the Almighty Himself, we make everything in our image, for want of a more reliable model our artifacts tell more about ourselves than our confessions.
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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
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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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If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
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.
Joseph Brodsky
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I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
Joseph Brodsky
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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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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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Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe ... that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.
Joseph Brodsky
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I don't have principles. I have nerves.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
Joseph Brodsky
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In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.
Joseph Brodsky
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Bad literature is a form of treason.
Joseph Brodsky
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I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
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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I am quite prepared to die here [in NY]. It doesn't matter at all. I don't know better places, or perhaps if I do I am not prepared to make a move.
Joseph Brodsky