Quote

I slide my arm from under the sleeper's head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of each, waiting to be counted, the fallen angels sit.

Wislawa Szymborska

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Arms
Slide
Full
Counted
Head
Numb
Waiting
Slides
Hands
Pins
Angels
Swarming
Fallen
Sleeper
Angel
Sleepers

More quotes by Wislawa Szymborska

Image
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
Image
I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
After every war someone has to tidy up.
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
Image
Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
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
Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
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
I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious they don't like to joke.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
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
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
This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
Wislawa Szymborska