Wislawa Szymborska Quotes - Page 3

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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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Dream, Dark, Silence

  Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh (2000). “Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997”, p.4, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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.

  19 Copy quote

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Speak, Hours

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• Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Complicated, Persons

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• After every war someone has to tidy up.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  War, Tidy

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Poems New and Collected”, p.228, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Shadow, Four, Tables

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Inspiration, Ethos, Groups

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Poems New and Collected”, p.16, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Serious, Existentialist, Jokes

  Wisława Szymborska (1981). “Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems”, p.9, Princeton University Press

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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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• 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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Mean, Encounters, Different

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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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• 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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Long, World, Kind

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Map: Collected and Last Poems”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Light, Doubt, Secret

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Poems New and Collected”, p.183, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Jobs, Passion, Earth

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

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Strong, Believe, Men

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Poems New and Collected”, p.199, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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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• 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

  Littles, Common, Grind

  Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisław Barańczak, Clare Cavanagh (2000). “Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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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• 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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Different, Inspired, Sometimes

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• Memory at last has what I sought.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Memories, Lasts

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• 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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Inspiration, Writing, Thinking

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

  4 Copy quote

• They say the first love's most important. That's very romantic, but not my experience.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  First Love, Important, Firsts

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Map: Collected and Last Poems”, p.335, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Sex, Thinking, Space

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces”, p.155, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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