There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky
There isnt an executioner who isnt scared of turning victim one day, nor is there the sorriest victim who would not acknowledge (if only to himself) a mental ability to become an executioner.
Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky
This is just one example of the trimming of the self that along with the language itself, where verbs and nouns changed places as freely as one dare to have them do so bred in us such an overpowering sense of ambivalence that in ten years we ended up with a willpower in no way superior to a seaweeds.
Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky
There was Lenin, looking like a cherub in his blonde curls. Then Lenin in his twenties and thirties, bald and uptight.
Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky
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 imposter couldn't be happy with.
Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky
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.
Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky