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Quote by Joseph Brodsky

“What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.”

Quote by Joseph Brodsky

Author

Joseph Brodsky (May 24, 1940 - January 28, 1996) was a prominent poet of the 20th century, known for his profound thoughts and unique poetic style. His works cover a wide range of themes, including personal experiences, historical events, and philosophical reflections. Brodsky's poetry is characterized by its beautiful language and philosophical depth, and has had a profound impact on literature worldwide. more

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“Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.”

Want Two Book Interest Secret Minutes Fields Expression Pages Reflection Romantic Depth Theatre Intimate Stalking Hopeless Romantic Literary Love Depth Of Field

Book:Vintage Ondaatje

Source: Vintage Ondaatje

“You built your walls too, she tells him. So I have my wall. She says it glittering in a beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her.”

Beautiful Faces Laughing Wall Clothes Built Pale Your Wall Beautiful Clothes

Author:Michael Ondaatje

“He knows that the only way he can accept losing her is if he can continue to hold her or be held by her. If they can somehow nurse each other out of this. Not with a wall.”

Ifs Knows Way Accepting Wall Losing Nurse Losing Her

Book:The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“What he would say, he cannot say to this woman whose openness is like a wound, whose youth is not mortal yet. He cannot alter what he loves most in her, her lack of compromise, where the romance of the poems she loves still sits with ease in the real world. Outside these qualities he knows there is no order in the world.”

Knows World Stills Real Romance Order Quality Youth Wounds Compromise Mortals Ease Openness Real World

Book:The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“You think that you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character.”

Ifs Thinking Stills Sometimes Character Would Be Moving Left Rooms Failing Betrayal Breakup Inches Retreat Break Up Never Change

Author:Michael Ondaatje

“She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, when she was the product of her parents. What she was now was what she herself had decided to become.”

Parent Products Understood Decided

Book:The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“It would be enough for me to have the system of a jury of twelve versus the system of one judge as a basis for preferring the U.S. to the Soviet Union. I would prefer the country you can leave to the country you cannot.”

Country Enough Would Be Judging Bases Unions Soviet Twelve Soviet Union Versus Exile Jury

Book:Joseph Brodsky: Conversations

Source: Joseph Brodsky: Conversations

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”

Reason Wanted Grew Shapes Grew Up Clarity

Author:Michael Ondaatje

“…Even the idea of a city never entered his mind. It was as if he had walked under the millimeter of haze just above the inked fibers of a map, that pure zone between land and chart, between distances and legends, between nature and storyteller. The place they had chosen to come to, to be their best selves, to be unconscious of ancestry. Here, apart from the sun compass and the odometer mileage, and the book, he was alone, his own invention. He knew during these times how the mirage worked, the fata morgana, for he was within it.”

Ifs Mind Book Ideas Self Cities Sun Land Pure Distance Invention Chosen Unconscious Zone Maps Legends Storyteller Compass Ancestry Fiber Best Self Mirages Haze Mileage Morgana

Author:Michael Ondaatje

“I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers a meeting when the other has passed by innocently…but all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.”

Believe Body Remember Spirit Desire Fall I Believe Bits Ready Aspect Meetings Falling In Love Historian Atoms One Direction Reminiscing Parts Of The Body Pedants

Author:Michael Ondaatje