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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.

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
Absurdity
Poems
Prefer
Writing

More quotes by Wislawa Szymborska

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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
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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.
Wislawa Szymborska
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I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.
Wislawa Szymborska
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There's simply too much fuss about myself.
Wislawa Szymborska
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It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
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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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Dying - you can't do that to a cat.
Wislawa Szymborska
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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination. Even the richest, most surprising and wild imagination is not as rich, wild and surprising as reality. The task of the poet is to pick singular threads from this dense, colorful fabric.
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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I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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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Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
Wislawa Szymborska
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Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
Wislawa Szymborska
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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.
Wislawa Szymborska
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All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
Wislawa Szymborska
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In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
Wislawa Szymborska