This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don’t like to joke.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
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 -
They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
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