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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
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
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Book
Giving
Even
Something
Think
Thinking
Worst
More quotes by Wislawa Szymborska
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
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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.
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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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There's simply too much fuss about myself.
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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.
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When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
Wislawa Szymborska
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
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Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan
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Memory at last has what I sought.
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I don't know the role I'm playing. I only know it's mine, non-convertible.
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Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there's no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
Wislawa Szymborska
History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, as though the one had never existed: an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle, ... emptiness running down steps toward the garden, nobody's place in line.
Wislawa Szymborska
No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
Wislawa Szymborska
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
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
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
Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.
Wislawa Szymborska
Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still
Wislawa Szymborska
Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
Wislawa Szymborska
Animals don't even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down. ... The conscious impulse to change one's appearance is found only among humans.
Wislawa Szymborska