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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.

Wislawa Szymborska

Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven’t got even that much, however loveless and boring – this is one of the harshest human miseries.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Boredom Human Love Misery Work
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
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Death Easy Faith Live
I’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Dog Edition Myself Old Revision Work World
It’s a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor’s orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Doctor Fact Follow Health Order Yourself
Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don’t like to joke.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Boredom Existence Joke Monumental Serious
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
Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Gift Loan One Liner Perspective
Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Knowledge Leadership Life Maintain Question Temperature
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Arrival Consequence Fact Practice
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
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Memories Myself Search
I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Bone Myself Time
I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Fight Himself Imagination Myself Peace Quiet
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Comedy Element Preserve Tragedy
Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

Beginning Book Half Myself Open

They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.

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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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Popular Authors

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