Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
Joseph BrodskyIf they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.
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 Brodsky