Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAIs a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAKeep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI 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 SZYMBORSKAThe joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKATheir faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKANothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAnd whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAMy 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 SZYMBORSKACarry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAGenerally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKASomewhere out there the world must have an end.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAPoets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAEven the worst book can give us something to think about.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAll the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA