Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAThough I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAll is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAnimals 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 SZYMBORSKAI am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAll the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKANo day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAfter every war someone has to tidy up.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAOut of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
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 SZYMBORSKAThere’s simply too much fuss about myself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAt 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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI’m drowning in papers.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKASometimes 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!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKALife lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKACarry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA