And also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can’t understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKIHe replied: the ubiquity of sparrows.
More Adam Zagajewski Quotes
-
-
But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition…
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
And now, advice for beginning mystics.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
More ocean than terra firma. More shadow than form.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
A little rain, a little blood. Black fingernails in August; and going berserk, going bananas.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
The odds and ends of your mental surplus you carelessly throw at the world, one wants to be at a loss, in a maze; amazed, and amazingly unabashed.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
In summer the empire of insects spreads.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
This coming and going of the inner life – because this is what it is – is a curse and a blessing.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
I drink from a small spring, / my thirst excedes the ocean.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
A blessing because it brings about a movement, an energy which, when it peaks, creates a poem. Or a moment of happiness.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
He replied: the ubiquity of sparrows.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
Defend the value of the spiritual experience and if somebody tells you it’s an old fashioned notion, laugh loudly and serenely.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
Cities at daybreak are no one’s, and have no names. And I, too, have no name, dawn, the stars growing pale, the train picking up speed.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
A brilliant poet is at work here-a poet in the rugged landscape of conflict and pain.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
What’s astonishing and refreshing is his ability to combine the reporter’s perspective with a deep knowledge of poetry, including pre-Islamic Arab poems.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
This day’s nothingness as if from spite became a flame and scorched the lips of children and poets.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
But I was only a chaotic walker, nobody could stop me; even a totalitarian state was not able to control my daydreams, my poetic fascinations, the pattern of my walking.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
I don’t need to explain why it’s a curse.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
Once in a while it vanishes – in the sense that I become deaf to beauty for a week or two or three.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
And tracing the labyrinthine ways of your mind, the haphazard vagaries of your thoughts at ease,
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
Time takes life away and gives us memory, gold with flame, black with embers.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
As if entrapped in a tropical heatwave, with dozens of whirlwinds swirling in one’s mind, one thinks of a way out, or a way in: out of the scorching bosom of a volcano, and in – into the centre of a raging hurricane.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
Be sober, be intelligent, be educated, rely on the tangible reality as long as you can.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
Gabriel Levin’s book is a journey through time and through entrenched animosities of the Middle East.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
A certain traveler who knew many continents was asked what he found most remarkable of all.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
Human life and objects and trees vibrate with mysterious meanings, which can be deciphered like cuneiform writing.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI