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 SZYMBORSKAI cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
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Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
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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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
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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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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA