Joseph Brodsky Quotes

Joseph Brodsky reflects on humanity, military duty and justice with a thoughtful, sober voice that invites readers to ponder the cost of freedom.

14 quotes

1. 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.

2. The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time.

3. As long as the state permits itself to interfere in the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of state.

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

5. A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny.

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

7. 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 still writing in Russian.

8. Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.

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

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

11. 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.

12. Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture, and the people.

13. By writing... in the language of his society, a poet takes a large step toward it. It is society's job to meet him halfway, that is, to open his book and read it.

14. Nothing convinces an artist more of the arbitrariness of the means to which he resorts to attain a goal - however permanent it may be - than the creative process itself, the process of composition.