Quotes by Joseph Brodsky

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

“A person sets out to write a poem for a variety of reasons: to win the heart of his beloved; to express his attitude toward the reality surrounding him, be it a landscape or a state; to capture his...”

“One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a...”

“Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse”

“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...”

“The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; someth...”

“For darkness restores what light cannot repair. There we are married, blest, we make once more the two-backed beast and children are the fair excuse of what we're naked for.”

“He’d be a ruin by now, both physically and mentally. Physically because of the bottle. . . . Mentally because of that mixture of impotence and cynicism that corrodes everyone there — the stronger y...”

“It is better to be a total failure in democracy than a martyr or the crème de la crème in tyranny.”

“You know, when you go outside on the streets after having spent the day writing, you feel like a foreign body, even in your own country. This sensation perhaps feels more natural when you are reall...”

“This is just one example of the trimming of the self that — along with the language itself, where verbs and nouns changed places as freely as one dare to have them do so — bred in us such an overpo...”

“The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can't win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictabilit...”

“It is the army that finally makes a citizen of you; without it you still have a chance, however slim, to remain a human being.”

“As you pour yourself a scotch,crush a roach, or scratch your crotch, as your hand adjusts your tie, people die.”

“I wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here.I wish you sat on the sofa and I sat near.”

“I admire Joseph for his industry, his valor, and his intelligence. He's a terrific example of someone who is a complete poet, who doesn't treat poetry as anything else but a very hard job that he d...”