Wislawa Szymborska Quotes - Page 3

When I mention somebody, that doesn't necessarily mean that I identify with him, personally or poetically. I'm extremely happy when I encounter poets who are different than I am. The ones who have their own distinct poetics provide me with the greatest experiences.

All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.

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.

Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.

Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.

God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.

I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.

But they know about us, they know, the four corners, and the chairs nearby us. Discerning shadows also know, and even the table keeps quiet.

After every war someone has to tidy up.

Most of the earth's inhabitants work to get by. They work because they have to. They didn't pick this or that kind of job out of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the choosing for them. 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. And there's no sign that coming centuries will produce any changes for the better as far as this goes.

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.

Somewhere out there the world must have an end.

Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.

It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.

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.

Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke.

Memory at last has what I sought.

Today when two people decide upon a thoughtless and precipitate abbreviation of the physical space between them, they think, at least at that moment, that they're mutually attracted and drawn together by an overwhelming force.

A Note Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it's not; to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes. An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off; and if only once to stumble upon a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another, mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important.

I'd have to be really quick to describe clouds - a split second's enough for them to start being something else.

Well, one is inspired by the whole of life, one's own and somebody else's. You know how sometimes you hear great music, and music is completely untranslatable into words, into any words. A certain tension that is born when one listens to music could aid you in expressing something absolutely different.

I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.

Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.

Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.