FastSaying
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.
Joseph Brodsky
Related Quotes
It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.
— Joseph Brodsky
Against
American
Anything
A writer is seldom satisfied with the condition he finds himself in. We're all given to fretting a lot.
— Joseph Brodsky
Condition
Finds
Fretting
Man is what he reads.
— Joseph Brodsky
He
Man
Reads
The blue-collar is not supposed to read Horace, nor the farmer in his overalls Montale or Marvell. Nor, for that matter, is the politician expected to know by heart Gerard Manley Hopkins or Elizabeth Bishop. This is dumb as well as dangerous.
— Joseph Brodsky
Bishop
Blue-Collar
Dangerous
Beginning a poem, the poet as a rule doesn't know the way it's going to come out, and at times, he is very surprised by the way it turns out, since often it turns out better than he expected; often his thought carries further than he reckoned.
— Joseph Brodsky
Beginning
Better
Carries
