I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKASomewhere out there the world must have an end.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
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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.
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After every war someone has to tidy up.
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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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Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
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I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
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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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Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
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All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
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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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Memory at last has what I sought.
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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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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
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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!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA