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!
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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It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
When it comes, you’ll be dreaming that you don’t need to breathe; that breathless silence is the music of the dark and it’s part of the rhythm to vanish like a spark.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Dying – you can’t do that to a cat.
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I’m drowning in papers.
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Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there’s no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
There’s simply too much fuss about myself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
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All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
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I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA