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 SZYMBORSKAI’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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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I’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
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No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
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Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
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There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
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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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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
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I like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.
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Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.
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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 old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
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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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Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
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Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
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I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA