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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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What does the world get from two people/who exist in a world of their own?
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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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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I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.
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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You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
Wislawa Szymborska
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I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
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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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'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
Wislawa Szymborska
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It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself.
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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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
Wislawa Szymborska
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I'm drowning in papers.
Wislawa Szymborska
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All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
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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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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Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring - this is one of the harshest human miseries.
Wislawa Szymborska
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This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
Wislawa Szymborska
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Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?
Wislawa Szymborska