Joseph Brodsky Quotes - Page 3

The delirium and horror of the East. The dusty catastrophe of Asia. Green only on the banner of the Prophet. Nothing grows here except mustaches.

Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.

Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection.

In poetic thought, the role of the subconscious is played by euphony.

Bad literature is a form of treason.

An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.

Perhaps art is simply an organism's reaction against its retentive limitations.

I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet. I believe that I will return. Poets always return in flesh or on paper.

I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.

The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.

Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.

In the end, like the Almighty Himself, we make everything in our image, for want of a more reliable model; our artifacts tell more about ourselves than our confessions.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.

...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore.

What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.

The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously.

After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.

In general, in America, every discourse in literature in 15 minutes degenerates into a conversation about ethics, morality and this and that. The Holocaust and the consequences of it. Well, I find it terribly boring, predictable and unimportant, because what matters about literature is esthetic achievement.

I'm 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I'm nothing. By affiliation I'm nothing.

Tragedy, as you know, is always a fait accompli, whereas terror always has to do with anticipation, with man's recognition of hisown negative potential--with his sense of what he is capable of.

In Russia, the moment a person opens his mouth you know where he's from. There's the uniformity of experience of an individual in Russia. When you're about 7 years old you get into school and you get put in this factory or this bureaucracy or whatever. The options are computable. Here it's tremendously diverse.

Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation.

All the literati keep at least one imaginary friend.