More - Joseph Brodsky Quotes

The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even / if you will / eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.

Joseph Brodsky

 Defense

Twentieth-century Russian literature has produced nothing special except perhaps one novel and two stories by Andrei Platonov, who ended his days sweeping streets.

Joseph Brodsky

 

The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.

Joseph Brodsky

 American Poet Consciousness

Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language.

Joseph Brodsky

 American Poet

Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse

Joseph Brodsky

 

A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny.

Joseph Brodsky

 

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.

Joseph Brodsky

 American Poet

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

Joseph Brodsky

 American Poet Attitude

For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life -- the lesson of your utter insignificance.

Joseph Brodsky

 

No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there-well or poorly.

Joseph Brodsky

 Circumstances