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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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Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
Wislawa Szymborska
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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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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
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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
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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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Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
Wislawa Szymborska
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There is so much Everything that Nothing is hidden quite nicely
Wislawa Szymborska
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Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.
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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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
Wislawa Szymborska
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But they know about us, they know, the four corners, and the chairs nearby us. Discerning shadows also know, and even the table keeps quiet.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Memory at last has what I sought.
Wislawa Szymborska
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There's simply too much fuss about myself.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
Wislawa Szymborska
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I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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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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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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still
Wislawa Szymborska
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Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.
Wislawa Szymborska