Joseph Brodsky Quotes
By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation: those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan... In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential.
Quotes to Explore
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To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith.
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Because I was poor I had one special advantage. When you are poor, and basic survival is your concern, you have no alternative but to be an entrepreneur. You must take action to survive just as you must take action to seize an opportunity.
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The guitar is such an incredible instrument; it plays classical, flamenco, jazz, country, bluegrass, rock, acid, blues. You'll never see a clarinet playing Black Sabbath. But you will see a guitar in a clarinet band playing rhythm. It is the most popular instrument in the world; it is the one everybody loves.
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I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
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I decided I ought to pick a project that would not be controversial, that would not really cost the government a lot of money.
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I put it to you that there are no British poets, there are no British novelists. I have heard myself described as one, but I think really I'm an English novelist; there are Scottish poets and Scottish novelists.
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I think if you talk to my colleagues, I was less than a fearsome individual.
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Anna Wintour has guided me.
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After college, I went into the NBC Page Program. It's one of those great programs that allows kids to get their feet wet in every area of the business.
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In South Africa, being Chinese meant I wasn't white and I wasn't black. I trained in Baragwanath Hospital, the largest black hospital in South Africa. That was around 1976, the time of the Soweto Uprising, when police fired on children and students who were protesting. I was part of the group of interns who volunteered to treat them.
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When I'm actually writing by hand, I get more of a sense of the rhythm of sentences, of syntax. The switch to the computer is when I actually start thinking about lines. That's the workhorse part. At that point, I'm being more mathematical about putting the poem on the page and less intuitive about the rhythm of the syntax.
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Continuous persecution of widows and orphans is a crime. Even the Bible says there is a specific place in hell for those who oppress widows.
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I'm not a proper traveler. I don't like to be challenged or have too much of a change and prefer a week away just to relax.
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I do watch 'American Idol' sometimes. It's not really that pleasurable... I take that back. It is the epitome of a guilty pleasure. Sometimes there's some good singers on that show.
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There's the part of my life that the public and I share together. And there's the part that's mine to keep for myself. And that's mine. For me.
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I am ashamed to run against a lady. It's demeaning, very degrading. I have always refused to argue with a lady.
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I'm going to say my favorite thing is to eat salads, and I'll be like the altar boy.
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I wish my real life could be as simple and scripted as it is on television.
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I'm happy to do interviews from time to time, but I don't find them that necessary - and that hasn't seemed to have affected people's understanding of our work.
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Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark; when high and learned ones do only pierce the air.
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I hope 'Hellcat' is picked up again in years to come by people who realize just how queer it is: not just in its characters but its sensibility.
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Your aunt and uncle will be proud, though, won't they?" said Hermione as they got off the train and joined the crowd thronging toward the enchanted barrier. "When they hear what you did this year?" "Proud?" said Harry. "Are you crazy? All those times I could've died, and I didn't manage it? They'll be furious.
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Our admiration is so given to dead martyrs that we have little time for living heroes.
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By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation: those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan... In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential.
