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Every life has a file, if you will.

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
Files
Every
Life
File

More quotes by 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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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.
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 don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.
Joseph Brodsky
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Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection.
Joseph Brodsky
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For darkness restores what light cannot repair.
Joseph Brodsky
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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
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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?
Joseph Brodsky
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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
Joseph Brodsky
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I don't have principles. I have nerves.
Joseph Brodsky
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I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
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
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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
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.
Joseph Brodsky
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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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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
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If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.
Joseph Brodsky