American - Poet | May 24, 1940 - January 28, 1996
Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.
Joseph Brodsky
LifeGoodBattleBadWayWorse
What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.
BeautyKingSizeEverythingLike
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.
JourneyPointPoetDepartureArrival
For boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson of your life - the lesson of your utter insignificance.
LifeTimeLanguageBoredomYouYour
With poets, the choice of words is invariably more telling than the story line; that's why the best of them dread the thought of their biographies being written.
BestWordsStoryThoughtChoiceWhy
No man-made system is perfect, and the system of oppression is no exception. It is subject to fatigue, to cracks, which you are the likelier to discover the longer your term.
YouPerfectOppressionSystemCracks
Art is a spirit seeking flesh but finding words.
ArtWordsFindingSpiritFlesh
Any dispute in matters of taste usually results in a standoff.
ResultsMattersTasteDisputeAny
One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.
AttitudeArtViewArtistWorstTool
Prose is admittedly an art rooted in social intercourse, and a fiction writer is faster to find a common denominator with his cell mates than a poet is.
ArtFindFictionPoetSocialCommon
Bad politics make for bad morals.
PoliticsMoralsBadMake
Translation is not original creation - that is what one must remember. In translation, some loss is inevitable.
LossRememberInevitableCreation
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