quotes from classic

Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

Their mothers had finally caught up to them and been proven right. There were consequences after all but they were the consequences to things you didn't even know you'd done.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

A word after a word after a word is power.

more quotes from Margaret Atwood

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky

I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky

A revolution does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with the flourishing of a generation.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky

For aesthetics is the mother of ethics. Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe-not empirically, alas, but only theoretically-that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky

Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky

We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky

Every intellectual effort sets us apart from the commonplace, and leads us by hidden and difficult paths to secluded spots where we find ourselves amid unaccustomed thoughts.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky

Stupefaction, when it persists, becomes stupidity.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky

The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even-if you will-eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky

The cynic, a parasite of civilization, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail.

more quotes from Joseph Brodsky