Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
-
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!
-
I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
-
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
-
Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
-
Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke.
-
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
-
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
-
I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
-
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
-
All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
-
I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of lifes wisdom.
-
Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
-
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
-
When I mention somebody, that doesn't necessarily mean that I identify with him, personally or poetically. I'm extremely happy when I encounter poets who are different than I am. The ones who have their own distinct poetics provide me with the greatest experiences.
-
It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
-
No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
-
Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest human miseries.
-
Animals don't even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down. ... The conscious impulse to change one's appearance is found only among humans.
-
They say the first love's most important. That's very romantic, but not my experience.
-
Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
-
Poets, if they're genuine, must keep repeating "I don't know." Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that's absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their oeuvre.
-
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
-
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
-
Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.