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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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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
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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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No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
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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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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
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Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.
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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I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
Wislawa Szymborska
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No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with precisely the same kisses.
Wislawa Szymborska
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I'm drowning in papers.
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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All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
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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Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
Wislawa Szymborska
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I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
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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Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know.
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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There's simply too much fuss about myself.
Wislawa Szymborska