Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 May 1940
CountryUnited States of America
Joseph Brodsky quotes about
life long should
What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.
infinity objects
An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.
explaining conversation dislike
Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell. (in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy)
empires born ifs
If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore...
race humans human-race
Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
writing democracy want
I didn't want to be either the cre`me de la cre`me or a martyr. I'd rather be a novelty, especially in a democracy that doesn't understand the language I write in.
faster surface bottom
In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.
men should-have vocabulary
What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.
way caught proletariat
I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
uprising glowing firsts
This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.
government serious consideration
The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously.
america what-matters achievement
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.
country judging unions
It would be enough for me to have the system of a jury of twelve versus the system of one judge as a basis for preferring the U.S. to the Soviet Union. I would prefer the country you can leave to the country you cannot.
evil political eating
Russian talk of political evil is as natural as eating ...