At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKASometimes 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!
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
-
-
After every war someone has to tidy up.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
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.
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 -
No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
It’s a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor’s orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
They say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Dying – you can’t do that to a cat.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
When 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 SZYMBORSKA -
There’s simply too much fuss about myself.
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 -
Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA