They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAPoets 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.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds – a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.
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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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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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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.
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Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don’t like to joke.
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I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
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In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
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Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
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Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
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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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There’s simply too much fuss about myself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA






