Explore Quotes by Joseph Brodsky

English is the only interesting thing that's left in my life.

Paperbacks of those we deem classics should be cheap and sold at supermarkets.

I simply loved all my life; loved is too strong a word, but I had a tremendous sentiment, partly conditioned, of course, by the reality of where I grew up, for the spirit of individualism, for the idea of your being on your own in a big way.

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.

American poetry to me is a sort of relentless, nonstop sermon on human autonomy.

It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening.

Whether by theft or by artistry or by conquest, when it comes to time, Venetians are the world's greatest experts. They bested time like no one else.

I'm no parasite. I'm a poet who will bring honor and glory to his country.

This assumption that the blue collar crowd is not supposed to read it, or a farmer in his overalls is not to read poetry, seems to be dangerous if not tragic.

I'm the happiest combination you can think of. I'm a Russian poet, an English essayist, and a citizen of the United States.

A writer is a tool of the language rather than the other way around.

I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.

The imprisoning of a writer is the same as the burning of a book.

Poetry seems to be the only weapon able to beat language, using language's own means.

With poets, the choice of words is invariably more telling than the story line; that's why the best of them dread the thought of their biographies being written.

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.

What makes art in general, and literature in particular, remarkable, what distinguishes them from life, is precisely that they abhor repetition. In everyday life, you can tell the same joke thrice and, thrice getting a laugh, become the life of the party. In art, though, this sort of conduct is called 'cliche.'

Neither as a writer nor, moreover, as a leader of a nation should you use terminology that obscures the reality of human evil.

There is nothing odder than to apply an analytical device to a synthetic phenomenon: for instance, to write in English about a Russian poet.

The literature from which I come is rather large.

In the 20th century, imprisonment of writers practically comes with the territory.