Unfortunately, a human being is able to comprehend only that amount of evil which he is able to commit himself. — 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
The mechanics of love imply some sort of bridge between the sensual and the spiritual, sometimes to the point of deification; the… — 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
Poetry seems to be the only weapon able to beat language, using language's own means. — Joseph Brodsky Copy Share Image
Bookstores should be located not only on campuses or on main drags, but at the assembly plant's gates, also. — 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
