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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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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
Reality
Best
Something
Primacy
Agreement
Regard
Imagination
Common

More quotes by 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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In the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world.
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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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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When I mention somebody, that doesn't necessarily mean that I identify with him, personally or poetically. I'm extremely happy when I encounter poets who are different than I am. The ones who have their own distinct poetics provide me with the greatest experiences.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know.
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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Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still
Wislawa Szymborska
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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.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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.
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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What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
Wislawa Szymborska
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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Memory at last has what I sought.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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.
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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I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
Wislawa Szymborska