Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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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 -
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 like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I’m drowning in papers.
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 -
My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
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Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
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This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
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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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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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
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Whether you want it or not, your genes have a political past, your skin a political tone. your eyes a political color. You walk with political steps on political ground.
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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
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They say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
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God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.
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All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
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Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA