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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
Literature
Arrived
Really
German
Grand
Afford
Germany
California
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Mann
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Thomas
More quotes by Joseph Brodsky
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.
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
In general, in America, every discourse in literature in 15 minutes degenerates into a conversation about ethics, morality and this and that. The Holocaust and the consequences of it. Well, I find it terribly boring, predictable and unimportant, because what matters about literature is esthetic achievement.
Joseph Brodsky
How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
Joseph Brodsky
Poetry is what is gained in translation.
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
What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
Joseph Brodsky
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky
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
I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out which is worse the dark inside, or the darkness out.
Joseph Brodsky
When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
Joseph Brodsky
If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
Joseph Brodsky
I'm not trying to be ridiculous or funny, but it was rather pleasant to find yourself in isolation, in solitary.
Joseph Brodsky
The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
Joseph Brodsky
Bad literature is a form of treason.
Joseph Brodsky
Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
Joseph Brodsky
A man should know about himself two or three things: whether he is a coward whether he is an honest man or given to lies whether he is an ambitious man. One should define oneself first of all in those terms, and only then in terms of culture, race, creed.
Joseph Brodsky
If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.
Joseph Brodsky
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
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
