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All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Wislawa Szymborska
Age: 88 †
Born: 1923
Born: July 2
Died: 2012
Died: February 1
Critic
Essayist
Literary Critic
Mechanic
Poet
Translator
Writer
Kornik
Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska
Szymborska
Memory
Mines
Mine
Memories
Look
Nothing
Looks
Owned
More quotes by Wislawa Szymborska
This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
Wislawa Szymborska
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
I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
Wislawa Szymborska
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
Wislawa Szymborska
Each of us has a very rich nature and can look at things objectively, from a distance, and at the same time can have something more personal to say about them. I am trying to look at the world, and at myself, from many different points of view. I think many poets have this duality.
Wislawa Szymborska
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
No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
Wislawa Szymborska
No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
Wislawa Szymborska
I don't know the role I'm playing. I only know it's mine, non-convertible.
Wislawa Szymborska
Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
Wislawa Szymborska
Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
Wislawa Szymborska
Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.
Wislawa Szymborska
Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared.
Wislawa Szymborska
Dying - you can't do that to a cat.
Wislawa Szymborska
It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
Wislawa Szymborska
Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
Wislawa Szymborska
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
Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
Wislawa Szymborska
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
They say the first love's most important. That's very romantic, but not my experience.
Wislawa Szymborska
