My poems getting published in Russia doesn't make me feel in any fashion, to tell you the truth. I'm not trying to… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
There is nothing odder than to apply an analytical device to a synthetic phenomenon: for instance, to write in English about a… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Once I stop being a citizen of the U.S.S.R., I will not stop being a Russian poet. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I wrote poems. That is my work. I am convinced... I believe that what I wrote will be useful to people not… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Prose is admittedly an art rooted in social intercourse, and a fiction writer is faster to find a common denominator with his… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of conscience, of thinking, of… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Poetry seems to be the only weapon able to beat language, using language's own means. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
At certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable,… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
The more one reads poetry, the less tolerant one becomes of any sort of verbosity, be that in political or philosophical discourse,… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Beginning a poem, the poet as a rule doesn't know the way it's going to come out, and at times, he is… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
A person sets out to write a poem for a variety of reasons: to win the heart of his beloved; to express… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
The real biographies of poets are like those of birds, almost identical - their data are in the way they sound. A… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
People who buy 'The National Enquirer' would buy poetry. They should be given a choice. I'm absolutely serious. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I was quite happy in Arkhangelsk.Subsequently, I was sent to a village. I liked it in its own way because it sounded… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.' — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
“In the business of writing, what one accumulates is not experience but uncertainties.” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
I haven't shifted language. I'm writing in English because I like it. I'm a sucker for the language, but the good old poems I'm… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
“What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
“The instinctive preference was to read rather than to act. No wonder our actual lives were more or less a shambles” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture, and the people. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share
