Joseph Brodsky Quotes
It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.
Quotes to Explore
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If it's free, it's advice; if you pay for it, it's counseling; if you can use either one, it's a miracle.
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I'm French - it's less important. Meaning, I remain a Frenchman in America, but I adapt to American culture. I feel good there - but I'm still a foreigner.
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We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.
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The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
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Being bi-racial and being from the country, I can talk to guys like Travis Frederick from Wisconsin and Doug Free from Wisconsin. And then I can go over and talk to Dez Bryant. I mean, think about the two different standpoints you need to have a real conversation with both, to really understand what they've been through.
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To people of my generation, the picture show was really another dimension - sensual, whimsical. No uniforms or collective rites, but a place where little boys like me could laugh and feel free.
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The American Dream is that any man or woman, despite of his or her background, can change their circumstances and rise as high as they are willing to work.
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I think, initially, working on your own is really great because it allows you to just be really free and not worry about how things are perceived or if people are going to think you're an idiot. And once that becomes ingrained, at least for me, I think I'll feel really comfortable to work with other people and still feel that same freedom.
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The one woman who never gives herself is your free woman, who is always giving herself.
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When we say Afro American, we include everyone in the Western Hemisphere of African descent. South America is America. Central America is America. South America has many people in it of African descent.
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I think great artists have no time to waste with having disproportionate egos and irrational requests. They're too focused on their work to actually lose themselves in hysterical spirals where they become monsters or tyrants.
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Bankruptocracy is as much a European predicament as it is an American 'invention.' The difference between the experience of the two continents is that at least Americans did not have to labour under the enormous design faults of the eurozone.
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There is a tension in relationships between wanting to return to the womb, but also wanting to be free. Because sometimes the woman's attentions can be overly maternal, and you want to go, 'Ahhhh!'
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And a tiny number of people in a few states make these decisions, and we're left with these options that are increasingly not attractive to the American people.
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The government of Iran has no problem with the American nation.
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If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
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Organising free and fair elections is more important than the result itself.
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Critics don't buy records. They get 'em free.
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We are going to change the GNU Free Documentation License in such a way that Wikipedia will be able to become licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. And so this is not, as some people speculated on Facebook my 50th birthday party. This is a party to celebrate the liberation of Wikipedia.
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A person possessed with an idea cannot be reasoned with.
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The possibility that empathy resides in parts of the brain so ancient that we share them with rats should give pause to anyone comparing politicians with those poor, underestimated creatures.
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I lived in the US for donkeys' years so it has been a journey back in time for me. If you have had personal experience of something, it is always more authentic.
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Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
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It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.
