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Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.

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

Fortune Inspirational Place Poet Select
I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Myself Personality Thinking
Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Choice Decision Kind Perspective
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!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Myself Poem Quick Reading Time Work Writing
Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Better Knowledge People
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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Color Ground Past Politics Walk Yourself
Memory at last has what I sought.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Last Memories Myself Thinking
Poets 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 SZYMBORSKA

Common Poet Publish Reading Understand
We’re extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Fortune Kind Live Precise Question World
Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Blink Carry Funny Galaxy Moments
Dying – you can’t do that to a cat.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Animal Cat Death Yourself
Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don’t like to joke.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Boredom Existence Joke Monumental Serious
Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Beautiful Certain Confidence Life Time
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 SZYMBORSKA

Beginning Creativity Humanity Kind Life Love Man Myself Understand
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

Choice Demand Loss Myself Rejection Way
This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Charm Morning Terrify Worth
It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Easy Explanation Understand Yourself
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

Angel Count Head Myself Sleep
Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there’s no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Death Easy Finding Live Love People True
I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Book Fashion Myself Old Past Reading Thinking Time
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

Animal Appearance Conscious Different Human Oneself Try
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Comedy Element Preserve Tragedy
Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Land Life Scratch Time
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

Breathe Darkness Dreams Music Need Rhythm Spark
They say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Experience Important Love Myself Romantic
Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Complication Nature Person
What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Existence People World

Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.

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Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.

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