I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAThey say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
-
-
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 -
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 -
Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
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 -
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
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 just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
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 -
Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
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 -
I like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Memory at last has what I sought.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA