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I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.

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
Earning
Early
Poet
Started
Rather
Living

More quotes by Wislawa Szymborska

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No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.
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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
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Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know.
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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!
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I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
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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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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You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
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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I'm drowning in papers.
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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Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light.
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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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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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
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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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I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.
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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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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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