Quote

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

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
Absurdity
Poems
Prefer
Writing

More quotes by Wislawa Szymborska

Image
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
Image
I am a tarsier and a tarsier's son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
When it comes, you’ll be dreaming that you don’t need to breathe that breathless silence is the music of the dark and it’s part of the rhythm to vanish like a spark.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
I'm drowning in papers.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
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.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
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
Image
Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
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
Image
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
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
Image
I'd have to be really quick to describe clouds - a split second's enough for them to start being something else.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
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.
Wislawa Szymborska
Image
I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
Wislawa Szymborska