I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKAI cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
More Wislawa Szymborska Quotes
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Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven’t got even that much, however loveless and boring – this is one of the harshest human miseries.
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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
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I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
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Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
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Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
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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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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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There’s simply too much fuss about myself.
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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 day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
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Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.
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I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
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Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!
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All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
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And whatever I do will become forever what I’ve done.
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Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
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Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
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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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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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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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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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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
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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’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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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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Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA