"What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness."
"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."
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Source: Joseph Brodsky (2011). “On Grief And Reason: Essays”, p.106, Penguin UK
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