No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKACarry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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Memory at last has what I sought.
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I slide my arm from under the sleeper’s head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of each, waiting to be counted, the fallen angels sit.
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I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
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No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
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In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
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Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
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I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
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Animals don’t even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down. The conscious impulse to change one’s appearance is found only among humans.
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Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don’t like to joke.
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I’m drowning in papers.
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I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
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I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
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When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
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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!
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I like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.
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There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
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What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
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I’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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After every war someone has to tidy up.
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I am a tarsier and a tarsier’s son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out.
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It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
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All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
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Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven’t got even that much, however loveless and boring – this is one of the harshest human miseries.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA