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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.

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
Firsts
Syllables
First
Belongs
Destroy
Silence
Already
Word
Future
Syllable
Past
Pronounce

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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
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You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
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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.
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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn't possible to save mankind.
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I'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
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I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
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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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Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
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Dying - you can't do that to a cat.
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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.
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After every war someone has to tidy up.
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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.
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I'm drowning in papers.
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Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there's no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
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I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of lifes wisdom.
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Today when two people decide upon a thoughtless and precipitate abbreviation of the physical space between them, they think, at least at that moment, that they're mutually attracted and drawn together by an overwhelming force.
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God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men.
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