“A day in which I don’t write leaves a taste of ashes.”

Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female — whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

He reflected. ‘I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

It is dreadful to think that behind me my own past is no longer anything but shifting darkness.

Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.

Death itself does not frighten me; it is the jump I am afraid of.

The body is not a thing, it is a situation: it is our grasp on the world and our sketch of our project.

Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.

That the child is the supreme aim of woman is a statement having precisely the value of an advertising slogan.

Youth and what the Italians so prettily call stamina. The vigor, the fire, that enables you to love and create. When you’ve lost that, you’ve lost everything.

You said something very true the other day: that for us, nudity begins with the face.

But it is impossible for anyone to say ‘I am sacrificing myself’ without feeling bitterness.

There’s something tragic about you. Your feeling for the absolute. You were made to believe in God and spend your life in a convent.

Weakness’ is weakness only in light of the aims man sets for himself, the instruments at his disposal and the laws he imposes.

I enjoyed my exhaustion, though; I liked overdoing things.

Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.

I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.

A poet is the most beautiful poem, never read out loud by anyone.

Love to the fullest. Either you’ll live for eternity or die as a poet.

I’ve always been intrigued by cutout silhouettes. They are so intriguing, so poetic-the shadow of a soul. They tell everything about a character and they are open to be filled with one’s own imagination.

I’m a poet, a sad poet, who wrote about her, always and forever.

Aren’t all poets born from tragedy?

I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.

Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.