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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
Owned
Memory
Mines
Mine
Memories
Look
Nothing
Looks

More quotes by Wislawa Szymborska

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No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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
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I'm drowning in papers.
Wislawa Szymborska
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They say the first love's most important. That's very romantic, but not my experience.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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
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This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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
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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan
Wislawa Szymborska
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Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know.
Wislawa Szymborska
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You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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
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In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
Wislawa Szymborska
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I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
Wislawa Szymborska
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And whatever I do will become forever what I've done.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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
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What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
Wislawa Szymborska
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Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
Wislawa Szymborska