All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAAnimals 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.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I slide my arm from under the sleeper’s head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of each, waiting to be counted, the fallen angels sit.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Something doesn’t start at its usual time. Something doesn’t happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
After every war someone has to tidy up.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Memory at last has what I sought.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Poets 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.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA -
I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA