Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKALife lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAEven boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAThere is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI 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 SZYMBORSKAIt’s a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor’s orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAThey say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKADying – you can’t do that to a cat.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI 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 SZYMBORSKATheir faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAny knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKASuch certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAThere’s simply too much fuss about myself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAWhen I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAll is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA