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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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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
Understood
Yearn
Courses
Herd
Course
Herds
Common
Grind
Read
Published
Littles
Poets
Anything
Daily
Little
Poet

More quotes by Wislawa Szymborska

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Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
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All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
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The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
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I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs.
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I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
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I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.
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I am who I am. A coincidence no less unthinkable than any other.
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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.
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I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
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In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
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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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At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn't possible to save mankind.
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Each of us has a very rich nature and can look at things objectively, from a distance, and at the same time can have something more personal to say about them. I am trying to look at the world, and at myself, from many different points of view. I think many poets have this duality.
Wislawa Szymborska
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And whatever I do will become forever what I've done.
Wislawa Szymborska
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I'm one-time-only to the marrow of my bones.
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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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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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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Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
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