Joseph Brodsky Quotes

I am too dark in my heart tonight.

For always in her there was a dark place full of despair and a great dividing force to make meaning because there was none.

The Loneliness One dare not sound -- And would as soon surmise AS in its Grave go plumbing To ascertain the size -- The Loneliness whose worst alarm Is lest itself should see -- And perish from before itself For just a scrutiny -- The Horror not to be surveyed -- But skirted in the Dark -- With Consciousness suspended -- And Being under Lock -- I fear me this -- is Loneliness -- The Maker of the soul Its Caverns and its Corridors Illuminate -- or seal

Sometimes you can't see your way out. The "dark night of the soul" - it's a reality for many, many people.

I think there comes a time in every persons life where they just need to go to the darkest, most dismal place.

There is a dark place calling to me, but I will not go just yet. I know I can't return from it.

Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.

They flank me - depression on my left, loneliness on my right. They don't need to show their badges. I know these guys very well. ... Then they frisk me. They empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying there. Depression even confiscates my identity; but he always does that.

Choking with dry tears and raging, raging, raging at the absolute indifference of nature and the world to the death of love, the death of hope and the death of beauty, I remember sitting on the end of my bed, collecting these pills and capsules together and wondering why, why when I felt I had so much to offer, so much love, such outpourings of love and energy to spend on the world, I was incapable of being offered love, giving it or summoning the energy with which I knew I could transform myself and everything around me.

Your melancholy. Or depression. Along with nine-tenths of the afflictions I've studied, diagnosed, attempted to treat. Call them whatever you like, but they're just different names for loneliness. That's what lets the darkness in. That's what you have to fight.

The only real laughter comes from despair.

Loneliness is something you can't walk away from.

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o’clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn’t work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

I had a terror-since September -I could tell to none-and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground-because I am afraid.

She wants to go home, but nobody's home. That's why she lies, broken inside. With no place to go, no place to go, to dry her eyes, broken inside.

I feel the madness creeping slowly. Loved by many I'm still lonely.

You don’t know what it’s like to be alone until you’ve had someone inside your head.

There are no windows within the dark house of depression through which to see others, only mirrors.

Oh! Stars and clouds and winds, ye are all about to mock me; if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not, depart, depart, and leave me in darkness.

How can I express the darkness?

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere, cloudcover thick. I try to stay just above the surface, yet I'm already under and living within the ocean.

Oh darkness, I feel like letting go.

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,Reality's dark dream!I turn from you, and listen to the wind,Which long has raved unnoticed.

Me in a one-man tent crouching over carrier bag. It's not just the lowest point of the trip. It's the lowest point ever. In 38 years.