I’m one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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There’s simply too much fuss about myself.
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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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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
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Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
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They say the first love’s most important. That’s very romantic, but not my experience.
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No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
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Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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I’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
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When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
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Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don’t like to joke.
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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.
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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
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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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It’s just not easy to explain to someone else what you don’t understand yourself.
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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
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The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
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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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I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
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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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I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds – a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.
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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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Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
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It’s a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor’s orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA