Russia Quotes by Joseph Brodsky

8 Russia quotes by Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky’s eight terse lines on Russia echo his poetic, reflective voice. The snippets feel like compact verses that capture his nuanced view of the nation.

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Persecution mania is still around. In your writing, in your exchanges with people, meeting people who are in Russian affairs, Russian literature,…

Joseph Brodsky

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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

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In terms of freedom, America doesn't invite any comparison to Russia. It would be silly to make one. Every line that I…

Joseph Brodsky

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In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches…

Joseph Brodsky

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In Russia, the moment a person opens his mouth you know where he's from. There's the uniformity of experience of an individual…

Joseph Brodsky

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What's happening in Russia is devoid of autobiographical interest for me. Maybe it's egocentric. Whatever it is, feel free to use it.

Joseph Brodsky

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Yevtushenko is a high member of his country's establishment, and he lies terribly about the United States to his Russian readers.

Joseph Brodsky

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To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of…

Joseph Brodsky

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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

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For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.'

Joseph Brodsky

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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

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On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound.

Joseph Brodsky

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“In the business of writing, what one accumulates is not experience but uncertainties.”

Joseph Brodsky

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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

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Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.

Joseph Brodsky

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I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.

Joseph Brodsky

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“What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech”

Joseph Brodsky

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“secrecy is a hotbed of vanity”

Joseph Brodsky

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“The instinctive preference was to read rather than to act. No wonder our actual lives were more or less a shambles”

Joseph Brodsky

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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