Joseph Brodsky Quotes
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After the last line of a poem, nothing follows except literary criticism.
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I remember rather little of my life, and what I do remember is of small consequence.
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I belong to the Russian language. As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives.
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The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
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Whoever it was who said that to philosophize is an exercise in dying was right in more ways than one, for by writing a book, nobody gets younger.
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Prison is essentially a shortage of space made up for by a surplus of time; to an inmate, both are palpable.
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Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture, and the people.
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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.
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The literature from which I come is rather large.
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Regardless of whether one is a writer or a reader, one's task consists first of all in mastering a life that is one's own, not imposed or prescribed from without, no matter how noble its appearance may be. For each of us is issued but one life, and we know full well how it all ends.
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Art is a spirit seeking flesh but finding words.
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A person sets out to write a poem for a variety of reasons: to win the heart of his beloved; to express his attitude toward the reality surrounding him, be it a landscape or a state; to capture his state of mind at a given instant; to leave - as he thinks at that moment - a trace on the earth.
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Although I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet.
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A writer is seldom satisfied with the condition he finds himself in. We're all given to fretting a lot.
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Beginning a poem, the poet as a rule doesn't know the way it's going to come out, and at times, he is very surprised by the way it turns out, since often it turns out better than he expected; often his thought carries further than he reckoned.
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Poetry is not an art or a branch of art: it's something more.
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The concept of historical necessity is the product of rational thought and arrived in Russia by the Western route. The idea of the noble savage, of an inherently good human nature hampered by bad institutions, of the ideal state, of social justice and so forth - none of these originated or blossomed on the banks of the Volga.
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I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside.
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Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.
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American poetry to me is a sort of relentless, nonstop sermon on human autonomy.
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Good style in prose is always hostage to the precision, speed, and laconic intensity of poetic diction.
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A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.
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Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
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My intention is to write poems. That's what I've been doing most of my life.