Joseph Brodsky Quotes

They should be in every room in every motel in the land.

Russia is my home…and for everything that I have in my soul I am obligated to Russia and its people. And—this is the main thing—obligated to its language.

Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe—not empirically, alas, but only theoretically—that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.

A big step for me, and a small step for mankind.

Snobbery? But it’s only a form of despair.

Racism? But isn’t it only a form of misanthropy?

The dusty catastrophe of Asia. Green only on the banner of the Prophet. Nothing grows here except mustaches.

Illness and death…the only things that a tyrant has in common with his subjects… In this sense alone, a nation profits from being run by an old man.