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I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.

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
Glorious
Books
Reading
Book
Think
Devised
Thinking
Pastime
Fashioned
Humankind

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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
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There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely
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Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
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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.
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There's simply too much fuss about myself.
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Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.
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I don't know the role I'm playing. I only know it's mine, non-convertible.
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I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
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Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know.
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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.
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Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
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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.
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Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
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No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
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When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
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I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
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All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
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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.
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We're extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself.
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