Quotes from Joseph Brodsky

What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech

Since there are no laws that can protect us from ourselves, no criminal code is capable of preventing a true crime against literature; though we can condemn the material suppression of literature¬Ã¢â'¬â€the persecution of writers, acts of censorship, the burning of books—we are powerless when it comes to its worst violation: that of not reading the books. For that crime, a person pays with his whole life; if the offender is a nation, it pays with its history.

Now to die of grief would mean, I'm afraid, to die belatedly, while latecomers are unwelcome, particularly in the future. ...

What paradise and vacation have in common is that you have to pay for both, and the coin is your previous life.

Plain and simply, a love lyric is one's soul set in motion. If it's good, it may do the same to you.

More than anything, memory resembles a library in alphabetical disorder, and with no collected works by anyone.

the present engenders the past far more energetically than the other way around.

Mandelstam was, one is tempted to say, a modern Orpheus: sent to hell, he never returned, while his widow dodged across one-sixth of the earth's surface, clutching the saucepan with his songs rolled up inside, memorizing them by night in the event they were found by Furies with a search warrant. These are our metamorphoses, our myths.

VIII O when so much has been and gone behind you—grief, to say the least— expect no help from anyone. Board a train, get to the coast. It's wider and it's deeper. This superiority's not a thing of joy especially. Mind you, if one has to feel as orphans do, better in places where the view stirs somehow and cannot sting.

The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned impostor couldn't be happy with. Something, in other words, that can't be shared, like your own skin — not even by a minority.

In an anthropological respect, let me reiterate, a human being is an aesthetic creature before he is an ethical one. Therefore, it is not that art, particularly literature, is a by-product of our species' development, but just the reverse. If what distinguishes us from other members of the animal kingdom is speech, then literature – and poetry in particular, being the highest form of locution – is, to put it bluntly, the goal of our species.

In the end, there's always this city. As long as it exists, I don't believe that I, or for that matter, anyone, can be mesmerized or blinded by romantic tragedy.

It is a virtue, I came to believe long ago, not to make a meal out of one's emotional life. There's always enough work to do, not to mention that there's world enough outside.

Dotknij mnie - pod palcami poczujesz rzep uschÅ'y, wilgo? wieczoru lub poranku, tÄ™tno kamienioÅ'omu miasta, oddech stepowej pustki, tych, którzy ju? nie ?yjÄ…, lecz których pamiÄ™tam. Dotknij mnie - a poczujesz pod czubkami palców wszystko to, co istnieje poza mnÄ…, beze mnie, co nie wierzy mnie, mojej twarzy, memu paltu, wpisujÄ…c nas w swój bilans zawsze po stronie ujemnej.

Susan, Susan -- Poetry: aviation! Prose: infantry. [to Susan Sontag]

Aesthetic sense is the twin of one's instinct for self-preservation and is more reliable than ethics.

Love is more powerful than separation, but the latter is more lasting.

A rhyme turns an idea into a law; and, in a sense, each poem is a linguistic codex.

Love as content is in the habit of limiting formal patterns. The same goes for faith. After all, there are only so many adequate manifestations for truly strong sentiments; which, in the end, is what explains rituals.

JeÅ›li zaÅ'o?y?, ?e piÄ™kno jest takÄ… dystrybucjÄ… Å›wiatÅ'a, która najbardziej odpowiada naszej siatkówce, Å'za jest formÄ… przyznania siÄ™ do niemo?noÅ›ci zatrzymania przez siatkówkÄ™ – a tak?e przez sama Å'zÄ™ – tego piÄ™kna na staÅ'e. MiÅ'o??, ?eby to tak podsumowa?, ma prÄ™dko?? Å›wiatÅ'a; rozstanie – prÄ™dko?? d?wiÄ™ku

There are places in which things don't change. These are a substitute for one's memory.

A bird may twitter a better song. But should you consider abortion wrong or that the quacks ask too high a fee, come to this wall, and see.

Scratch on, my pen: let's mark the white the way it marks us.

Ah, how much more soothing (that is to say, if one should get the choice) to be wiped off the earth by hell-bound fiends than by neurotics.