Quotes by Wislawa Szymborska

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.

Wislawa Szymborska

All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.

Wislawa Szymborska

All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.

Wislawa Szymborska

Even the worst book can give us something to think about.

Wislawa Szymborska

Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.

Wislawa Szymborska

Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. I am near, too near for him to dream of me.

Wislawa Szymborska

Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.

Wislawa Szymborska

I like being near the top of a mountain. One can't get lost here.

Wislawa Szymborska

I slide my arm from under the sleeper's head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of each, waiting to be counted, the fallen angels sit.

Wislawa Szymborska

It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself.

Wislawa Szymborska

Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light.

Wislawa Szymborska

In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.

Wislawa Szymborska

Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice.

Wislawa Szymborska

Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. ...

Wislawa Szymborska

This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.

Wislawa Szymborska

I don't believe I have a mission. Sometimes I really have a spiritual need to say something more general about the world, and sometimes something personal.

Wislawa Szymborska

You know, I'm worried about Szymborska. I wish she would stop smoking.

Wislawa Szymborska

'There's nothing new under the sun': that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun.

Wislawa Szymborska

Somewhere out there the world must have an end.

Wislawa Szymborska

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

Wislawa Szymborska