Joseph Brodsky Quotes - Page 5

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• ...boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Voice, Self, Views

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• It's partly the fault of the institutions of education. But it's partly the decision to be relieved of responsibility. Literature is simply the most focused form of the demands on the evolution of the species. It imposes a certain responsibility, moral, ethical and esthetic responsibility, and the species simply doesn't want to oblige.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Responsibility, Decision, Faults

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

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• If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Should Have, Wrecks, Apartment

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Way, Proletariat, Caught

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

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• 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 predictability of the future is what drives you crazy.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Crazy, Winning, Space

  "Less Than One: Selected Essays". p. 28. Book by Joseph Brodsky, 1986.

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• Literature sort of makes your daily operation, your daily conduct, the management of your affairs in the society a bit more complex. And it puts what you do in perspective, and people don't like to see themselves or their activities in perspective. They don't feel quite comfortable with that. Nobody wants to acknowledge the insignificance of his life, and that is very often the net result of reading a poem.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Reading, Perspective, People

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Robert Frost's triumph was not being at John Kennedy's inauguration ceremony, but the day when he put the last period on "West-Running Brook.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Running, West, Triumph

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• 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

  Writing, Views, People

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• What's happening in Russia is devoid of autobiographical interest for me. Maybe it's egocentric. Whatever it is, feel free to use it.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Russia, Use, Interest

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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