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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

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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
Grand
Afford
Germany
California
Asked
Mann
Bits
Thomas
Literature
Arrived
Really
German

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For darkness restores what light cannot repair.
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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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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
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After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
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When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
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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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How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
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Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
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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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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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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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I don't have principles. I have nerves.
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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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I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
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Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
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There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
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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.
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I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
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