X

Sort by

Quote length

Sentiment

Change font

Change background

Wislawa Szymborska Inspirational Quotes (85)

Page 1 of 4
Filter & Style
Image
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
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
Image
Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious they don't like to joke.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
I don't know the role I'm playing. I only know it's mine, non-convertible.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
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
Image
After every war someone has to tidy up.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Animals don't even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down. ... The conscious impulse to change one's appearance is found only among humans.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Whether you want it or not, your genes have a political past, your skin a political tone. your eyes a political color. ... you walk with political steps on political ground.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
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
Image
I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
Wislawa Szymborska
Previous
Next