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 ZAGAJEWSKITime takes life away and gives us memory, gold with flame, black with embers.
More Adam Zagajewski Quotes
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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.
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Remember that the act of writing is a tiny part of a bigger something.
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This day’s nothingness as if from spite became a flame and scorched the lips of children and poets.
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A certain traveler who knew many continents was asked what he found most remarkable of all.
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A brilliant poet is at work here-a poet in the rugged landscape of conflict and pain.
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I don’t need to explain why it’s a curse.
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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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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.
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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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This coming and going of the inner life – because this is what it is – is a curse and a blessing.
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More ocean than terra firma. More shadow than form.
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Clear moments are so short. There is much more darkness.
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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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But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition…
ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI






