And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAIt’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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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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I like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.
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Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
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Dying – you can’t do that to a cat.
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In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
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I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
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When it comes, you’ll be dreaming that you don’t need to breathe; that breathless silence is the music of the dark and it’s part of the rhythm to vanish like a spark.
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I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds – a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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After every war someone has to tidy up.
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I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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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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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
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Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
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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.
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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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What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
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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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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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At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind.
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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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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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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
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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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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