Tomas Transtromer Quotes

• In the middle of life, death comes to take your measurements. The visit is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit is being sewn on the sly.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Goes On, Measurement, Suits

  Tomas Transtromer (2014). “The Deleted World: Poems”, p.31, Macmillan

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• We always feel younger than we are. I carry inside myself my earlier faces, as a tree contains its rings. The sum of them is me. The mirror sees only my latest face, while I know all my previous ones.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Mirrors, Tree, Faces

  Tomas Transtromer (2011). “The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems”, p.249, New Directions Publishing

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• It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat but often the shadow seems more real than the body.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Beautiful, Real, Heart

  Tomas Transtromer (2017). “The Half-Finished Heaven: Selected Poems”, p.59, Graywolf Press

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• The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall. It is like a prayer to what is empty And what is empty turns its face to us and whispers: 'I am not empty, I am open'.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Prayer, Wall, Taken

  Tomas Transtromer (2017). “The Half-Finished Heaven: Selected Poems”, p.126, Graywolf Press

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• I am carried in my shadow like a violin in its black case

  Tomas Transtromer

  Black, Shadow, Violin

  Tomas Transtromer (2011). “The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems”, p.199, New Directions Publishing

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• A ship's engine far away on the water expands the summer-night horizon. Both joy and sorrow swell in the dew's magnifying glass. Without really knowing, we divine; our life has a sister ship, following quietly another route. While the sun blazes behind the islands.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Summer, Night, Knowing

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• Every abstract picture of the world is as impossible as a blueprint of a storm. Don't be ashamed because you're human: be proud! Inside you, vaults behind vaults open endlessly. You will never be finished, and that's as it should be.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Storm, World, Proud

  "Swedish Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer dies aged 83" by Andrew Brown, www.theguardian.com. March 27, 2015.

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• I am still the place where creation does some work on itself.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Doe, Creation, Stills

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• A person shows himself for an instant as in a photograph but clearer and in the background something which is bigger than his shadow.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Shadow, Photograph, Bigger

  "Following Words Through a Labyrinth" by David Orr, www.nytimes.com. October 6, 2011.

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• It's always so early in here, before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. Thank you for this life! Still I miss the alternatives. The sketches, all of them, want to become real.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Thank You, Real, Choices

  10 Copy quote

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