I'm A Bad Jew, A Bad Russian,

Judge: And What Is Your Occupation In General? Brodsky: Poet, Poet-translator. Judge: And Who Recognized You To Be A Poet? Who Put You In The Ranks Of Poet? Brodsky: No One. And Who Put Me In The Ranks Of Humanity? Judge: Did You Study It?...how To Be A Poet? Did You Attempt To Finish An Insitute Of Higher Learning...where They Prepare...teach Brodsky: I Did Not Think That It Is Given To One By Education. Judge: By What Then? Brodsky: I Think That It Is From God.

If There Is Anything Good About Exile, It Is That It Teaches One Humility. It Accelerates One’s Drift Into Isolation, An Absolute Perspective. Into The Condition At Which All One Is Left With Is Oneself And One’s Language, With Nobody Or Nothing In Between. Exile Brings You Overnight Where It Would Normally Take A Lifetime To Go.

It's Rather An Exhilarating Feeling. It's 6 Or 7 When You Get Up And Go Out Into The Fields Wearing Your Wellingtons Or High Boots. You Know That At This Very Hour Half The Nation Does The Same Thing, Which Gives You, With The Benefit Of Hindsight, A Satisfaction In Doing Those Things, Too, A Knowledge, A Sense Of The Nation. I Was A City Boy Until Then.

Twentieth-century Russian Literature Has Produced Nothing Special Except Perhaps One Novel And Two Stories By Andrei Platonov, Who Ended His Days Sweeping Streets.

The Moment That You Place Blame Somewhere, You Undermine Your Resolve To Change Anything.