I’m the happiest combination you can think of. I’m a Russian poet, an English essayist, and a citizen of the United States. – Joseph Brodsky
The blue-collar is not supposed to read Horace, nor the farmer in his overalls Montale or Marvell. Nor, for that matter, is the politician expected to know by heart Gerard Manley Hopkins or Elizabeth Bishop. This is dumb as well as dangerous. – Joseph Brodsky
The real biographies of poets are like those of birds, almost identical – their data are in the way they sound. A poet’s biography lies in his twists of language, in his meters, rhymes, and metaphors. – Joseph Brodsky
Whoever it was who said that to philosophize is an exercise in dying was right in more ways than one, for by writing a book, nobody gets younger. – Joseph Brodsky
Writers seem mesmerized by the state – the temporal entity. The word ‘perestroika’ is impressed somehow on our minds. But that is not the duty of a writer. – Joseph Brodsky
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience. – Joseph Brodsky
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 Brodsky
Whether by theft or by artistry or by conquest, when it comes to time, Venetians are the world’s greatest experts. They bested time like no one else. – Joseph Brodsky
I belong to Russian literature, but I am an American citizen, and I think it’s the best possible combination. – Joseph Brodsky
An ethical man doesn’t need a consensus of his allies in order to act against something he finds reprehensible. – Joseph Brodsky
It’s a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening. – Joseph Brodsky
For a head of state presiding over a ruined economy, an active army with its low wages is god-sent: All he’s got to do is provide it with an objective. – Joseph Brodsky
Weaknesses have a certain function in a poem… some strategy in order to pave the reader’s way to the impact of this or that line. – Joseph Brodsky
To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment. – Joseph Brodsky
Whenever one pulls the trigger in order to rectify history’s mistake, one lies. For history makes no mistakes, since it has no purpose. – Joseph Brodsky
For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey. – Joseph Brodsky
On the whole, books are indeed less finite than ourselves. Even the worst among them outlast their authors – mainly because they occupy a smaller amount of physical space than those who penned them. Often they sit on the shelves absorbing dust long after the writer himself has turned into a handful of dust. – Joseph Brodsky
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell. – 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
I wrote poems. That is my work. I am convinced… I believe that what I wrote will be useful to people not only now but in future generations. – Joseph Brodsky