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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.
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
Make
Fashion
Getting
Tell
Doesn
Tickle
Truth
Published
Feel
Poems
Feels
Ego
Trying
Russia
More quotes by Joseph Brodsky
Man is what he reads.
Joseph Brodsky
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
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
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
The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
Joseph Brodsky
After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
Joseph Brodsky
How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
Joseph Brodsky
I don't have principles. I have nerves.
Joseph Brodsky
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
If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
Joseph Brodsky
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.
Joseph Brodsky
When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.
Joseph Brodsky
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
Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
Joseph Brodsky
Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it on the contrary, throw it wide open.
Joseph Brodsky
I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.
Joseph Brodsky
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
Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.
Joseph Brodsky
Bad literature is a form of treason.
Joseph Brodsky
I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
Joseph Brodsky