Anna Kamienska Quotes

• Writing down your thoughts is both necessary and harmful. It leads to eccentricity, narcissism, preserves what should be let go. On the other hand, these notes intensify the inner life, which, left unexpressed, slips through your fingers. If only I could find a better kind of journal, humbler, one that would preserve the same thoughts, the same flesh of life, which is worth saving.

  Anna Kamienska

  Letting Go, Writing, Hands

  46 Copy quote

• I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself.

  Anna Kamienska

  Writing, Order

  16 Copy quote

• Tell me what’s the difference
  between hope and waiting
  because my heart doesn’t know
  It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting
  It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope

  Anna Kamienska

  Heart, Cutting, Differences

  12 Copy quote

• Even a painful longing is some form of presence.

  Anna Kamienska

  Longing, Painful, Form

  9 Copy quote

• My poems are more my silence than my speech. Just as music is a kind of quiet. Sounds are needed only to unveil the various layers of silence.

  Anna Kamienska

  Silence, Speech, Layers

  8 Copy quote

• I’m moved by everything broken and crippled. Since that’s how we really are.

  Anna Kamienska

  Broken, Moved, Crippled

  7 Copy quote

• There are things better left untouched by words.

  Anna Kamienska

  Left

  7 Copy quote

• I’ve learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what’s unsaid, what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being.

  Anna Kamienska

  Confusion, Understanding, Levels

  8 Copy quote

• I have no talent. I write poems for myself, to think things through, that’s all.

  Anna Kamienska

  Writing, Thinking, Talent

  7 Copy quote

• I returned
  to confirm
  there can be no return.

  Anna Kamienska

  Return

  7 Copy quote

• Poetry is a presentiment of the truth.

  Anna Kamienska

  Poetry Is

  8 Copy quote

• This morning I suddenly catch myself: I'm not there, I'm so lost in thought, I don't know what's going on around me. Can you think yourself to death?

  Anna Kamienska

  Morning, Thinking, Numbness

  10 Copy quote

• Tell me what's the difference

  Anna Kamienska

  Patience, Differences

  4 Copy quote

• I am that which lies beyond time. Like a melody, which sounds completely only after the last note is played.

  Anna Kamienska

  Lying, Sound, Lasts

  7 Copy quote

• The way a source strains toward the light, toward the air. Its laboring work, its effort, its black passageways like despair. That’s the way a poet looks for words. With muscles, gestures.

  Anna Kamienska

  Air, Light, Effort

  6 Copy quote

• Letters of the condemned. Last words scratched on a cell’s wall. To write like that.

  Anna Kamienska

  Wall, Writing, Cells

  4 Copy quote

• I don’t write poetry when I wish, I write when I can’t, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.

  Anna Kamienska

  Writing, Wish, Throat

  7 Copy quote

• Where your pain is, there your heart lies also.

  Anna Kamienska

  Pain, Lying, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• We cling to words like drowning men to straws. But still we drown, we drown.

  Anna Kamienska

  Men, Drowning, Stills

  8 Copy quote

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