I’m working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAIn every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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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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I’m drowning in papers.
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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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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
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Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
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I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
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Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
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After every war someone has to tidy up.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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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 don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.
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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA