Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKASecret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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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.
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Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
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Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.
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What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
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I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.
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Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
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I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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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.
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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.
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Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
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I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
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Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
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Dying – you can’t do that to a cat.
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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA