Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKANo one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.
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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
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 -
Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
They say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA