This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.

Judge: And what is your occupation in general? Brodsky: Poet, poet-translator. Judge: And who recognized you to be a poet? Who put you in the ranks of poet? Brodsky: No one. And who put me in the ranks of humanity? Judge: Did you study it?...How to be a poet? Did you attempt to finish an insitute of higher learning...where they prepare...teach Brodsky: I did not think that it is given to one by education. Judge: By what then? Brodsky: I think that it is from God.

Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.

If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore.

If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.

Literature sort of makes your daily operation, your daily conduct, the management of your affairs in the society a bit more complex. And it puts what you do in perspective, and people don't like to see themselves or their activities in perspective. They don't feel quite comfortable with that. Nobody wants to acknowledge the insignificance of his life, and that is very often the net result of reading a poem.

Creativity is an unending exercise in uncertainty.