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 SZYMBORSKASecret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
-
-
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Dying – you can’t do that to a cat.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I 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 SZYMBORSKA -
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
It’s a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor’s orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
They say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
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!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA






