A writer is a tool of the language rather than the other way around. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
A writer is defined by the language in which he writes, and I would stick to that definition. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
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… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
By writing... in the language of his society, a poet takes a large step toward it. It is society's job to meet… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I didn't want to be either the cre'me de la cre'me or a martyr. I'd rather be a novelty, especially in a… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
One who writes a poem writes it because the language prompts, or simply dictates, the next line. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I don't believe in that country any longer. I'm not interested. I'm writing in the language, and I like the language. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
I belong to the Russian language. As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference… — 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
...boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman,… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
What provides you with subject matter is your own language - and that's all. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Writers seem mesmerized by the state - the temporal entity. The word 'perestroika' is impressed somehow on our minds. But that is… — 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
“[T]he accumulation of things not spelled out, not properly articulated, may result in neurosis.” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Because civilizations are finite, in the life of each of them there comes a moment when the center ceases to hold. What… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform,… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
In order to live in a different country, you have to love something there. You have to love something there. You have… — 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 Image
For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.' — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
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 Image
On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
“In the business of writing, what one accumulates is not experience but uncertainties.” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
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 Image
Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
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 Image
“What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech” — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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