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Joseph Brodsky Quotes


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Quotes by Joseph Brodsky

Showing 51-60 of 147 Quotes by Joseph Brodsky

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.

~Joseph Brodsky

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Regardless of whether one is a writer or a reader, one's task consists first of all in mastering a life that is one's own, not imposed or prescribed from without, no matter how noble its appearance may be. For each of us is issued but one life, and we know full well how it all ends.

~Joseph Brodsky

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What makes art in general, and literature in particular, remarkable, what distinguishes them from life, is precisely that they abhor repetition. In everyday life, you can tell the same joke thrice and, thrice getting a laugh, become the life of the party. In art, though, this sort of conduct is called 'cliche.'

~Joseph Brodsky

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I don't suppose that I know more about life than anyone of my age, but it seems to me that, in the capacity of an interlocutor, a book is more reliable than a friend or a beloved.

~Joseph Brodsky

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I began to despise Lenin, even when I was in the first grade, not so much because of his political philosophy or practice... but because of his omnipresent images.

~Joseph Brodsky

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

~Joseph Brodsky

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After the last line of a poem, nothing follows except literary criticism.

~Joseph Brodsky

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A man is, after all, what he loves. But one always feels cornered when asked to explain why one loves this or that person, and what for. In order to explain it - which inevitably amounts to explaining oneself - one has to try to love the object of one's attention a little bit less.

~Joseph Brodsky

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It is almost a rule that the more complex a man is, the simpler his billing. A person with a retrospective ability gone rampant often would be called an historian. Similarly, one to whom reality doesn't seem to make sense gets dubbed a philosopher.

~Joseph Brodsky

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No matter how daring or cautious you may choose to be, in the course of your life, you are bound to come into direct physical contact with what's known as Evil. I mean here not a property of the gothic novel but, to say the least, a palpable social reality that you in no way can control.

~Joseph Brodsky

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Poet

Born: May 24th, 1940

Died: January 28th, 1996

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