-
All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
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.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
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.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
Wislawa Szymborska
-
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.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know".
Wislawa Szymborska
-
I am a tarsier and a tarsier's son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
I slide my arm from under the sleeper's head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of each, waiting to be counted, the fallen angels sit.
Wislawa Szymborska
-
I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
Wislawa Szymborska
