"What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness."
"For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey."
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Source: Joseph Brodsky, Cynthia L. Haven (2002). “Joseph Brodsky: Conversations”, p.99, 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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