Joseph Brodsky Quotes

In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

Be alone even when there's a million people around, because tomorrow it will be a different million people.

And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material - awesome, malleable,older than men or worlds or water. And it was merciless - for it let a man become precisely what he alone made of himself.

The greater the spirit, the more one is alone.

But when you're alone in the world, really alone, you have no choice but to be open to suggestions.

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

I happen to be pretty productive when I am in jail. When you are in jail, you have to spend more time with yourself.

By nature, I sit alone in a room and type... My goal was never celebrity.

Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.

If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you.

But in the end, in the end one is alone. We are all of us alone. I mean I'm told these days we have to consider ourselves as being in society... but in the end one knows one is alone, that one lives at the heart of a solitude.

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

I like the idea of isolation. I like the reality of it. You realize what you are... not that the knowledge is inevitably rewarding.

When we are away from home, our only constant companion is our self.

Your absence has not taught me how to be alone, it merely has shown that when together we cast a single shadow on the wall

I am lonely, sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me.

I think a person needs to learn from childhood to find himself alone. It means to not be bored when you’re by yourself, because a person who finds himself bored when alone –as it seems to me– is in danger.

A lone walker is both present and detached, more than an audience but less than a participant. Walking assuages or legitimizes this alienation.

Isolation, but it's a good vulnerability. Humbling. I actually seek out solitude.