Wislawa Szymborska Quotes - Page 4

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Reality, Pace, Demand

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Vacuums, Spirit, Talent

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• Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Believe, Never Quit, Faults

  Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh (2000). “Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of lifes wisdom.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Sympathy, Wisdom, Pain

  Wisława Szymborska (1981). “Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems”, p.205, Princeton University Press

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• No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  My Family, Myth, Happened

  Wisława Szymborska (1981). “Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems”, p.63, Princeton University Press

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• I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Fighting, Quiet, Imagine

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• I've had the good fortune to read a lot of great American writers in translation, and my absolute beloved, for me one of the greatest writers ever, is Mark Twain. Yes, yes, yes. And Whitman, from whom the whole of 20th-century poetry sprung up. Whitman was the origin of things, someone with a completely different outlook. But I think that he's the father of the new wave in the world's poetry which to this very day is hitting the shore.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Father, Thinking, Sprung Up

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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

  Son, Two, Tiny

  Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh (2000). “Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997”, p.98, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Bones, Marrow, One Time

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Map: Collected and Last Poems”, p.50, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There's simply too much fuss about myself.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Too Much

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

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• Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Easier, Dies

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Map: Collected and Last Poems”, p.190, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Dying - you can't do that to a cat.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Cat, Dying

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

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• My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Loss, Choices, Rejection

  Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh (2000). “Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997”, p.145, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

  Angel, Hands, Waiting

  17 Copy quote

• I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Earning, Poet, Earning A Living

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• What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Two, People, Doe

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Poems New and Collected”, p.140, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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