"What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness."
"After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor."
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Source: Joseph Brodsky, Cynthia L. Haven (2002). “Joseph Brodsky: Conversations”, p.98, Univ. Press of Mississippi
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"Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe ... that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens."
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