Joseph Brodsky

Venice is eternity itself.

— Joseph Brodsky

Whether by theft or by artistry or by conquest, when it comes to time, Venetians are the world's greatest experts. They bested…

— Joseph Brodsky

American poetry is this country's greatest patrimony. It takes a stranger to see some things clearly. This is one of them, and…

— Joseph Brodsky

For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure…

— Joseph Brodsky

The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry…

— Joseph Brodsky

“Local fog in Venice has a name: nebbia. It obliterates all reflections ... and everything that has a shape: buildings, people, colonnades,…

— Joseph Brodsky

I simply think that water is the image of time, and every New Year's Eve, in somewhat pagan fashion, I try to…

— Joseph Brodsky

Every individual ought to know at least one poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then…

— Joseph Brodsky

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

No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. No matter how you lived there -…

— Joseph Brodsky

The career of an esthete was nothing I ever intended.

— Joseph Brodsky

Life has a great deal up its sleeve.

— Joseph Brodsky

This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.

— Joseph Brodsky

In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.

— Joseph Brodsky

Any dispute in matters of taste usually results in a standoff.

— Joseph Brodsky

If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a…

— Joseph Brodsky

Love itself is the most elitist of passions. It acquires its stereoscopic substance and perspective only in the context of culture, for…

— Joseph Brodsky

Poetry is what is gained in translation.

— Joseph Brodsky

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

— Joseph Brodsky

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

The unbearableness of the future is easier to face than that of the present if only because human foresight is much more…

— Joseph Brodsky

People who buy 'The National Enquirer' would buy poetry. They should be given a choice. I'm absolutely serious.

— Joseph Brodsky

“Men can return to where they have done evil deeds, but men do not return to where they’ve been abased. On this…

— Joseph Brodsky

Bad literature is a form of treason.

— Joseph Brodsky

This assumption that the blue collar crowd is not supposed to read it, or a farmer in his overalls is not to…

— Joseph Brodsky