"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."
Read quote
5 likes
Quote collection
Joseph Brodsky quotes (page 4 of 6)
109 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins."
Read quote
5 likes
"At certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise wouldn't be retained by the mind."
Read quote
5 likes
"What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence."
Read quote
5 likes
"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."
Read quote
5 likes
"The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously."
Read quote
5 likes
"If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore."
Read quote
5 likes
"I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it."
Read quote
5 likes
"Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture and the people. They've been stolen from the people and now the stolen things are being returned to their owners, but I don't think their owners should be grateful to receive them."
Read quote
5 likes
"Russian talk of political evil is as natural as eating."
Read quote
5 likes
"In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface."
Read quote
5 likes
"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."
Read quote
4 likes
"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."
Read quote
4 likes
"If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck."
Read quote
4 likes
"Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell. (in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy)"
Read quote
4 likes
"...boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction."
Read quote
4 likes
"I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow."
Read quote
4 likes
"In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches at the faculty club. In Russia it suggests the moral force of an art practiced against the greatest personal odds, as a discipline, solitary and intense."
Read quote
3 likes
"Who included me among the ranks of the human race?"
Read quote
3 likes
"Judge: And what is your occupation in general? Brodsky: Poet, poet-translator. Judge: And who recognized you to be a poet? Who put you in the ranks of poet? Brodsky: No one. And who put me in the ranks of humanity? Judge: Did you study it?...How to be a poet? Did you attempt to finish an insitute of higher learning...where they prepare...teach Brodsky: I did not think that it is given to one by education. Judge: By what then? Brodsky: I think that it is from God."
Read quote
3 likes