They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAMy 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.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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I am a tarsier and a tarsier’s son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out.
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All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
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I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
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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.
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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
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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.
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No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
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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.
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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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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






