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
I don't suppose that I know more about life than anyone of my age, but it seems to me that, in the… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
My idea is simply - is very simple - is that the books of poetry should be published in far greater volume… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Whoever it was who said that to philosophize is an exercise in dying was right in more ways than one, for by… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
With poets, the choice of words is invariably more telling than the story line; that's why the best of them dread the… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
The unbearableness of the future is easier to face than that of the present if only because human foresight is much more… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
By and large, prisons are survivable, though hope is indeed what you need least upon entering here; a lump of sugar would… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Poetry isn't just different from prose, it's more important for the human species. — 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
Literature is a far more ancient and viable thing than any social formation or state. And just as the state interferes in… — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
It is almost a rule that the more complex a man is, the simpler his billing. A person with a retrospective ability… — 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
