After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.

The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.

The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.

The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously.

Perhaps art is simply an organism's reaction against its retentive limitations.

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.

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