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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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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
Two
Pupils
Great
Creature
Made
Tiny
Son
Creatures
Simply
Whatever
Left
Grandson

More quotes by 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.
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I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
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You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.
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Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know.
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It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself.
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Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!
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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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It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse.
Wislawa Szymborska
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The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.
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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I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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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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.
Wislawa Szymborska
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No one feels good at four in the morning. If ants feel good at four in the morning —three cheers for the ants.
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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There's simply too much fuss about myself.
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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Somewhere out there the world must have an end.
Wislawa Szymborska
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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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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