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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.
Joseph Brodsky -
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.
Joseph Brodsky
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My intention is to write poems. That's what I've been doing most of my life.
Joseph Brodsky -
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 -
What your foes do derives its significance or consequence from the way you react.
Joseph Brodsky -
What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
Joseph Brodsky -
A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.
Joseph Brodsky -
A writer is seldom satisfied with the condition he finds himself in. We're all given to fretting a lot.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
Joseph Brodsky -
Art is a spirit seeking flesh but finding words.
Joseph Brodsky -
Good style in prose is always hostage to the precision, speed, and laconic intensity of poetic diction.
Joseph Brodsky -
Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets.
Joseph Brodsky -
The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
Joseph Brodsky -
An ethical man doesn't need a consensus of his allies in order to act against something he finds reprehensible.
Joseph Brodsky
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No matter how daring or cautious you may choose to be, in the course of your life, you are bound to come into direct physical contact with what's known as Evil. I mean here not a property of the gothic novel but, to say the least, a palpable social reality that you in no way can control.
Joseph Brodsky -
I had been imprisoned three times and had twice been incarcerated in a madhouse.
Joseph Brodsky -
I belong to Russian literature, but I am an American citizen, and I think it's the best possible combination.
Joseph Brodsky -
Time can be an enemy or a friend.
Joseph Brodsky -
In order to live in a different country, you have to love something there. You have to love something there. You have to love either the spirit of the laws or the economic opportunities, or the - well, history of the country, the language perhaps, literature.
Joseph Brodsky -
People who buy 'The National Enquirer' would buy poetry. They should be given a choice. I'm absolutely serious.
Joseph Brodsky
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One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
Joseph Brodsky -
One belongs to one's language as a writer.
Joseph Brodsky -
I wrote poems. That is my work. I am convinced... I believe that what I wrote will be useful to people not only now but in future generations.
Joseph Brodsky -
Contrary to popular belief, the outskirts are not where the world ends - they are precisely where it begins to unfurl.
Joseph Brodsky