Joseph Brodsky Quotes

Translation is an interestingly different way to be involved both with poetry and with the language that I've found myself living in much of the time. I think the two feed each other.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.

And then the really awful thing is that at the end of the day after crying and experiencing things, then you look at what you've written and you're like, 'Hmm, there's half a page that's good here.' Then you throw out everything else.

I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.

I was 23 when I wrote 'Neighbors,' and I definitely look back at it now and cringe a little bit. I was trying to understand what drama was.

Geronimo' was great, but when I listen back to that now, I'm like, there's so many things I would have done differently.

I wrote about 22 plays before 'When You Cure Me,' which was staged in 2005. I occasionally get them out and have a read, thinking maybe there's a thought or an idea or even a turn of phrase that I could use for something new. There's not. They're dire.

I don't go back and read my own stuff too much, but there are times where I second-guess myself and said I could have done something different, like a line of dialogue.

Write something and leave it aside so you've practically forgotten it as much as possible, a month or so, then come back and read it as if you're reading it for the first time.

I used to spend a lot of time dreaming and writing poetry.

It is so painful watching yourself act, particularly because you can't do anything about it, it's all done and dusted.

The second I finish shooting something, I know I could have done it better if we started right then.

I love revisions...We can't go back and revise our lives, but being allowed to go back and revise what we have written comes closest.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.

I felt that some of my work was OK. If I could do it over, I'd do better.

I was a serious poet for quite a while and had little notebooks filled with poetry.

I really haven't had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I'd rather tell a story about somebody else.

I can work on a verse for a very long time before realising it's not any good and then, and only then, can I discard it.

Sometimes I think I'd be perfectly happy to go on rewriting 'Tipping the Velvet' forever because it was so much fun.

Well, I write a lot of poetry - that's where it usually all starts. I definitely want to show you guys sides of me - love, loss, heartbreak - all of that good stuff!

First drafts are never any good - at least, mine aren't.

Writers are rememberers.

I try not to look back at anything I do. I avoid it like the plague.

Starting after 60, I thought, 'I'm not going to be able to write a book of poems on the 70s. It's going to be all moans and groans and complaints, and what is there to laugh about?' But I found plenty to laugh about.