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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
-
-
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
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 -
Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
After every war someone has to tidy up.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I’m drowning in papers.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA






