I am a patriot, but I must say that English poetry is the richest in the world.

— Joseph Brodsky

I belong to the Russian language. As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives.

— Joseph Brodsky

If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed, genetic - goal.

— Joseph Brodsky

In general, dividing literature into prose and poetry began with the appearance of prose, for only in prose could such a division be expressed. By its nature, by its essence, art is hierarchical, automatically, and in this hierarchy, poetry stands above prose. If only because poetry is older. Poetry really is a very strange thing, because it belongs to a troglodyte as well as to a snob. It can be produced in the Stone Age and in the most modern salon, whereas prose requires a developed society, a developed structure, certain established classes, if you like. Here you could start reasoning like a Marxist without even being wrong. The poet works from the voice, from the sound. For him, content is not as important as is ordinarily believed. For a poet, there is almost no difference between phonetics and semantics. Therefore, only very rarely does the poet give any thought to who in fact comprises his audience. That is, he does so much more rarely than the prose writer.

— Joseph Brodsky

...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

— Joseph Brodsky

It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything.

— Joseph Brodsky

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse

— Joseph Brodsky

Man is what he reads.

— Joseph Brodsky

Men can return to where they have done evil deeds, but men do not return to where they’ve been abased. On this point God’s design and our own feeling of abasement coincides absolutely that we quit: the night, the rotting beast, the exultant mobs, our homes, our hearth fires, Bacchus in a vacant lot embracing Ariadne in the dark.

— Joseph Brodsky

My idea is simply - is very simple - is that the books of poetry should be published in far greater volume and be distributed in far greater volume, in far more substantial manner. You can sell in supermarkets very cheaply. In paperbacks. You can sell in drugstores.

— Joseph Brodsky