Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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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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Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.
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I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
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What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
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Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
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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.
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Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
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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.
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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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Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.
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I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
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No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
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Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
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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.
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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.
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Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there's no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still
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Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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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.