Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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A Note Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it's not; to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes. An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off; and if only once to stumble upon a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another, mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important.
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Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.
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I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
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Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
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What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
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No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.
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I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
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There's simply too much fuss about myself.
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I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
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Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
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It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself.
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History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, as though the one had never existed: an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle, ... emptiness running down steps toward the garden, nobody's place in line.
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Memory at last has what I sought.
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But they know about us, they know, the four corners, and the chairs nearby us. Discerning shadows also know, and even the table keeps quiet.
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After every war someone has to tidy up.
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Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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I don't know the role I'm playing. I only know it's mine, non-convertible.
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In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
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Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!
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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.