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 ZAGAJEWSKICities 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.
More Adam Zagajewski Quotes
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And now, advice for beginning mystics.
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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 -
And tracing the labyrinthine ways of your mind, the haphazard vagaries of your thoughts at ease,
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I drink from a small spring, / my thirst excedes the ocean.
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A certain traveler who knew many continents was asked what he found most remarkable of all.
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Defend the value of the spiritual experience and if somebody tells you it’s an old fashioned notion, laugh loudly and serenely.
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I don’t need to explain why it’s a curse.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI -
This coming and going of the inner life – because this is what it is – is a curse and a blessing.
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 -
This day’s nothingness as if from spite became a flame and scorched the lips of children and poets.
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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.
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Once in a while it vanishes – in the sense that I become deaf to beauty for a week or two or three.
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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.
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A little rain, a little blood. Black fingernails in August; and going berserk, going bananas.
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There exists a meaning, hidden from day to day, but accessible in moments of greatest attentiveness, in those moments when consciousness loves the world.
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI