"I remember myself, age five, sitting on a porch overlooking a very muddy road. The day was rainy. I was wearing rubber boots, yellow - no, not yellow, green - and for all I know, I'm still there."
Joseph BrodskyTiny Panda Quotes
Quotes by Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky, born on May 24, 1940, in Leningrad, Russia, emerged as a profound voice in 20th-century poetry, earning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987. His early life was marked by adversity, including expulsion from the Soviet Union, which fueled his exploration of themes like exile and identity. Brodsky's work, characterized by its lyrical intensity and intellectual depth, continues to resonate, bridging cultures and languages. His legacy transcends borders, influencing countless writers while advocating for the power of the human spirit through words.
21 quotes found
"What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness."
Joseph Brodsky
"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 among whom he lives."
Joseph Brodsky
"If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed, genetic - goal."
Joseph Brodsky
"Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production."
Joseph Brodsky"Prison is essentially a shortage of space made up for by a surplus of time; to an inmate, both are palpable."
Joseph Brodsky"The more one reads poetry, the less tolerant one becomes of any sort of verbosity, be that in political or philosophical discourse, be that in history, social studies or the art of fiction."
Joseph Brodsky
"It's not that prison makes you shed your abstract notions. On the contrary, it pares them down to their most succinct articulations. Prison is, indeed, a translation of your metaphysics, ethics, sense of history and whatnot into the compact terms of your daily deportment."
Joseph Brodsky"The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck."
Joseph Brodsky
"Poetry isn't just different from prose, it's more important for the human species."
Joseph Brodsky
"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."
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 I am that stranger."
Joseph Brodsky"Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself."
Joseph Brodsky
"My idea is simply - is very simple - is that the books of poetry should be published in far greater volume and be distributed in far greater volume, in far more substantial manner. You can sell in supermarkets very cheaply. In paperbacks. You can sell in drugstores."
Joseph Brodsky"People who buy 'The National Enquirer' would buy poetry. They should be given a choice. I'm absolutely serious."
Joseph Brodsky