Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAPoetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
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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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They say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.
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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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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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There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
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Whether you want it or not, your genes have a political past, your skin a political tone. your eyes a political color. You walk with political steps on political ground.
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Dying – you can’t do that to a cat.
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There’s simply too much fuss about myself.
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In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
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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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Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
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This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
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I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds – a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.
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When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
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I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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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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After every war someone has to tidy up.
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Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
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Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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I’m drowning in papers.
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God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA