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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

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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
Quite
Dies
Moving
Doesn
Better
Prepared
Matter
Places
Make
Perhaps
Move

More quotes by Joseph Brodsky

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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.
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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
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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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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.
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Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
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I don't have principles. I have nerves.
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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
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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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In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.
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If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.
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A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.
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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.
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I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
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The delirium and horror of the East. The dusty catastrophe of Asia. Green only on the banner of the Prophet. Nothing grows here except mustaches.
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For darkness restores what light cannot repair.
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On the whole, love comes with the speed of light separation, with that of sound.
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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
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Poetry is what is gained in translation.
Joseph Brodsky
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Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
Joseph Brodsky
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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