Wislawa Szymborska Quotes

• 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

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

• I’ve reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don’t know anything. People who claim that they know something are responsible for most of the fuss in the world.

  Wislawa Szymborska

• I’m fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.

  Wislawa Szymborska

• I’m drowning in papers.

  Wislawa Szymborska

• 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

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

  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

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

  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

• I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.

  Wislawa Szymborska

• I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.

  Wislawa Szymborska

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

• Generally speaking, life is so rich and full of variety; you have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.

  Wislawa Szymborska

• 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

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

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

  Wislawa Szymborska

• 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

• 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.

  Wislawa Szymborska

• Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.

  Wislawa Szymborska

Wislawa Szymborska (44)

Birth:	2nd July, 1923
Death:	1st February, 2012
Nationality:	Polish
Profession:	Essayist, Poet, Translator

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