Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAll is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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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.
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I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.
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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
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I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
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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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I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
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I like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.
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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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You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
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Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
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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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA






