Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAEven boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI 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 SZYMBORSKAPoorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAWe’re extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAWhatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAThey say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAThere’s simply too much fuss about myself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKALet 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 SZYMBORSKAWhen 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 SZYMBORSKAOut of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAThough I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAnimals 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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAEven the worst book can give us something to think about.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA