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 SZYMBORSKAPoets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind.
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 the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
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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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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 prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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I like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.
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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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After every war someone has to tidy up.
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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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Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.
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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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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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I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
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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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Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA






