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 SZYMBORSKAEven boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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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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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
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All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
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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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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 cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
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Something doesn’t start at its usual time. Something doesn’t happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared.
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Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.
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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’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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They say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.
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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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I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.
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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
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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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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
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I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
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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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I’m drowning in papers.
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Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
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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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Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
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Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA