It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAfter every war someone has to tidy up.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
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I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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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 -
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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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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Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
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After every war someone has to tidy up.
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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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Dying – you can’t do that to a cat.
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I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.
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Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
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Memory at last has what I sought.
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Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
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Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind.
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We’re extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself.
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Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
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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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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
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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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Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA