Wislawa Szymborska Quotes - Page 2

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• Each of us has a very rich nature and can look at things objectively, from a distance, and at the same time can have something more personal to say about them. I am trying to look at the world, and at myself, from many different points of view. I think many poets have this duality.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Distance, Thinking, Views

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• Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Choices, Decision, Kind

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Map: Collected and Last Poems”, p.314, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Hiking, Mountain, Lost

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• Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Tiny, Good Work, Twinkling

  Wisława Szymborska (1981). “Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems”, p.109, Princeton University Press

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• I don't know the role I'm playing. I only know it's mine, non-convertible.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Roles, Mines, Knows

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• The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Revenge, Writing, Hands

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems”, p.46, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Boredom, Gusto, Should

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• Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Tiny, Moments, Blink

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Poems New and Collected”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Kissing, Night, Two

  Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh (2000). “Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

  Usual, Should, Happens

  Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh (2000). “Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997”, p.238, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Sides, Remember, Life Is

  "Alone with the Greta Garbo of verse". Interview with James Hopkin, www.theguardian.com. July 15, 2000.

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• Poets, if they're genuine, must keep repeating "I don't know." Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that's absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their oeuvre.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Self, Effort, Together

  "The Poet and the World". Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 07, 1996.

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• I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Writing, People, Rooms

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• Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Scratches, Lasts, Sand

  Wisława Szymborska (1981). “Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems”, p.151, Princeton University Press

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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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Morning, Cheer, Feel Good

  Wisława Szymborska (1981). “Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems”, p.31, Princeton University Press

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• Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Two, People, Fifty

  Wislawa Szymborska (2002). “Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska”, p.99, W. W. Norton & Company

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• All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Reality, Agreement, Imagination

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Horse, Health, Doctors

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces”, p.196, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Speech, Firsts, Hardest

  "The Poet and the World". Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 07, 1996.

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• History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
  A thousand and one remains a thousand,
  as though the one had never existed:
  an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
  ...
  emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
  nobody's place in line.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Running, War, Garden

  Wislawa Szymborska, “Hunger Camp At Jaslo”

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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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Misery, Boring, Loveless

  "The Poet and the World". Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 07, 1996.

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• Four billion people on this earth, but my imagination is still the same. It's bad with large numbers. It's still taken by particularity. It flits in the dark like a flashlight, illuminating only random faces while all the rest go blindly by, never coming to mind and never really missed. . . . I can't tell you how much I pass over in silence.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Taken, Dark, Numbers

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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!

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Writing, Able, Sometimes

  "Alone with the Greta Garbo of verse". Interview with James Hopkin, www.theguardian.com. July 15, 2000.

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• I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Fighting, Poet

  "Alone with the Greta Garbo of verse". Interview with James Hopkin, www.theguardian.com. July 15, 2000.

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Funny, Imperfection, Easier

  "The Poet and the World". Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 07, 1996.

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