Wislawa Szymborska
Poet
1923-07-02
Quotes by Wislawa Szymborska
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The killer whale's heart weighs one hundred kilosbut in other respects it is light.There is nothing more animal-likethan a clear conscienceon the third planet of the Sun.
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The killer whale's heart weighs one hundred kilosbut in other respects it is light.There is nothing more animal-likethan a clear conscienceon the third planet of the Sun.
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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. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?
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Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
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Unfortunately, poetry is not born in noise, in crowds, or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about.
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After every war someone has to tidy up.
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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.
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All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
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Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
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Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
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I have sympathy for young people, for their growing pains, but I balk when these growing pains are pushed into the foreground, when you make these young people the only vehicles of life's wisdom.
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This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
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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.
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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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