Joseph Brodsky Quotes

Increasingly, to dismiss any popular artistic style is seen as the worst kind of snobbery. And snobbery, it goes without saying, is unacceptable in a diverse and democratic world.

We're all unique as actors. To yourself, you are unique. You have to think, 'I'm me. I'm not going to bunch myself with other people.' Agents and producers have to get you into a box to accommodate their limited imaginations.

I don't really think of myself so much as a writer as a stylist, someone who came into writing from the back door and has found it through a certain very specific and personal means.

I'm not like any other artist, point blank.

Music is contagious and everywhere and democratic, and that's what drew me in. I was interested in acting and being a director, but one of the things that bored me about theatre was that it was not accessible to everyone.

No man, even though he be Shakespeare, can write perfectly when his web is woven of threads that have been spun in many lands.

I continue to write. It's just one of those things that I do. I'll have periods when I write and periods when I don't. But you don't want it to become a discipline really. If it becomes a discipline, it becomes a chore and that's no good.

On the whole, I don't want to think too much about why I write what I write. If I know what I'm doing ... I can't do it.

I don't want to feel that I'm a singer or an actress - being able to say that those are just experiences is what I enjoy.

From the beginning [of the Lincoln in the Bardo], I actually had it in mind not to write a novel. I'd kind of gotten past that point where I felt bad for never having written a novel, even to where I felt really good about it, like I was a real purist.

Those who say only artists and architects can create are the ones who are elitist.

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account.

What I've always said was, hang in there, let me write what I want to write, and you'll probably like it.

What comes forth from you as an artist cannot be controlled. But you have responsibilities as a global citizen. Your history dictates your duty. And by writing about black people, you are not limiting yourself. The experiences of African-Americans are as wide open as God's closet.

I tend to get a little quirkier and crazier with my lyrics and come from a different angle when I'm writing for myself.

All worthwhile writing... comes from an individual vision, privately pursued.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

One hates an author that's all author.

I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told.

If what you want to do is write, then it's madness not to do it.

You've got to concentrate on the business of entertaining and writing songs. Always think different from the next person. Don't ever do a song as you heard somebody else do it.

Objectifying your own novel while writing it never really helps. Instead, I guess while you're writing you need to think: This is the novel I want to write. And when you're done you need to think: This is what the novel I wanted to write feels like and reads like and looks like. Other people might call it sweeping or small, but it's the book you chose.

I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from.

I'm never going to be a Tom Clancy. And I wouldn't really want to be - not that I have anything against him, and I wish him continued success - because that's not why I'm writing novels. I'm doing it because I have to. I feel like I have to, anyway.

You can find truly original pieces of writing, but they're original because you go, "Who would have even have thought of that?," or, "Why would anyone ever want to go see that?"