Quotes by Joseph Brodsky

“Lifethe way it really isis a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse”

“For darkness restores what light cannot repair.”

“...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.”

“... Now to die of griefwould mean, I'm afraid, to die belatedly, while latecomersare unwelcome, particularly in the future. ...”

“[T]he accumulation of things not spelled out, not properly articulated, may result in neurosis.”

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”

“Man is what he reads.”

“Whether pleasant or dismal, the past is always a safe territory, if only because it is already experienced, and the species' capacity to revert, to run backward -especially in its thoughts or dream...”

“The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.”

“[T]he longer you stay skeptical, doubtful, intellectually uncomfortable, the better it is for you.”

“I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is... In any case, I always thought that if the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water, the water was bound to ref...”

“Men canreturn to where they have done evil deeds,but men do not return to where theyve beenabased. On this point Gods design and ourown feeling of abasement coincideso absolutely that we quit: the ...”

“Of all the parts of your body, be most vigilant over your index finger, for it is blame-thirsty. A pointed finger is a victims logo.”

“I belong to the Russian language. As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people amo...”

“What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.”

“Who included me among the ranks of the human race?”

“How delightful to find a friend in everyone.”

“It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything.”

“If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed, genetic - goal.”

“Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it is not widely distributed.”