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Meaning
This reads as a plain reminder that relationships are not background detail, but the core of a life. It can be taken to mean that friendship and family deserve active care because they are what hold us steady when status, work, or ambition fail to do so. It lands in moments of drift, when someone needs to remember who remains when everything else moves.
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Original Language & Translation
Originally said in English.
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About Joseph Brodsky
Russian and American poet and essayist
Joseph Brodsky was a Russian and American poet and essayist. He is known for poetry and prose that moved between Russian and English, and for an essayistic voice that made him a major literary figure in both cultures. Brodsky wrote as a poet and essayist across two languages, and his work is often associated with reflection, exile, and the life of the mind. He is credited on this site with 153 quotes.
More from Joseph Brodsky (153 quotes) →More quotes by Joseph Brodsky
- “English is the only interesting thing that's left in my life.”Joseph Brodsky
- “Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.”Joseph Brodsky
- “How delightful to find a friend in everyone.”Joseph Brodsky
- “An ethical man doesn't need a consensus of his allies in order to act against something he finds reprehensibl…”Joseph Brodsky
Explore Friendship
- “And I have a few friends that I think would go to bat for me no matter what. Flea is definitely one of them.…”Anthony Kiedis
- “Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends…”James Cameron
- “That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing - the truly democrat…”Barbara Ehrenreich
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Books by Joseph Brodsky
Selected Poems, 1968-1996
2020
Less Than One
2020