If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates oneโs drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and oneโs language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.
Joseph BrodskyAs 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 BrodskyWhat concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.
Joseph Brodsky