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Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan

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
Loan
Gift
Nothing

More quotes by Wislawa Szymborska

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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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
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Four billion people on this earth, but my imagination is still the same. It's bad with large numbers. It's still taken by particularity. It flits in the dark like a flashlight, illuminating only random faces while all the rest go blindly by, never coming to mind and never really missed. . . . I can't tell you how much I pass over in silence.
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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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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No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
Wislawa Szymborska
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You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Sometimes I write quickly, sometimes I spend several weeks on a single poem. I would really love for readers not to be able to guess which of the poems took so much work!
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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Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know.
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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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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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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Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.
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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Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens?
Wislawa Szymborska
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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
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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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
Wislawa Szymborska