Szymborska Wislawa Quotes & Sayings

Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself. — Wislawa Szymborska

The track's all yours. We won't get in your way: by then we will have set off chasing ourselves rather than you. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

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

It turns out I was right.
But nothing has come of it. — Wislawa Szymborska

The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

History didn't greet us with triumphal fanfares: - it flung dirty sand into our eyes. Ahead of us lay long roads leading nowhere, poisoned wells and bitter bread. — Wislawa Szymborska

Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still — Wislawa Szymborska

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. — Wislawa Szymborska

All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination. — 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

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

I started earning a living as a poet rather early on. — Wislawa Szymborska

I don't know the role I'm playing. I only know it's mine, non-convertible. — Wislawa Szymborska

My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can't be each woman and each man.
I know I won't be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light. — Wislawa Szymborska

Every beginning, after all, is nothing but a sequel, and the book of events is always open in the middle. — Wislawa Szymborska

Dividing earth and sky
is not the right way
to think about this wholeness.
It only allows one to live
at a more precise address--
were I to be searched for
I'd be found much faster.
My distinguishing marks
are rapture and despair.


From 'Sky', in the collection 'Miracle Fair — Wislawa Szymborska

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. — Wislawa Szymborska

Poets, if they're genuine, must keep repeating "I don't know." Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that's absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their oeuvre. — Wislawa Szymborska

Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy. — 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

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 by,
never coming to mind and never really missed. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

Even if you bar my way,
even if you stare me in the face,
I'll pass you by on the chasm's edge, finer than a hair. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands. — 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

Even a passing moment has its fertile past. — Wislawa Szymborska

They say the first love's most important. That's very romantic, but not my experience. — Wislawa Szymborska

There's simply too much fuss about myself. — Wislawa Szymborska

I am telling him
what he wants to hear: ants
dying of love under
the constellation of the dandelion.
I swear that a white rose,
sprinkled with wine, sings.
I am laughing, tilting
my head carefully
as if checking an invention.
I am dancing, dancing
in astonished skin, in
an embrace that creates me. — Wislawa Szymborska

We know ourselves only as far as we've been tested. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems. — Wislawa Szymborska

Even boredom should be described with gusto. How many things are happening on a day when nothing happens? — Wislawa Szymborska

The Three Oddest Words
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold. — Wislawa Szymborska

Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two. — Wislawa Szymborska

The world, whatever we might think about it terrified by its vastness and by our helplessness in the face of it, embittered by its indifference to individual suffering - of people, animals, and perhaps also plants, for how can we be sure that plants are free of suffering; whatever we might think about its spaces pierced by the radiation of stars, stars around which we now have begun to discover planets, already dead? still dead? - we don't know; whatever we might think about this immense theater, to which we may have a ticket, but it is valid for a ridiculously brief time, limited by two decisive dates; whatever else we might think about this world - it is amazing. — Wislawa Szymborska

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny. — Wislawa Szymborska

Whether you want it or not,
your genes have a political past,
your skin a political tone.
your eyes a political color.
...
you walk with political steps
on political ground. — Wislawa Szymborska

within the four walls of avalanches, I call out to Yeti.
Stomping my feet for warmth
on the snow
the snow eternal. — Wislawa Szymborska

Somewhere out there the world must have an end. — Wislawa Szymborska

Even a graphomaniac is an extremely complicated person. — Wislawa Szymborska

They'll reenter their lives' cages, where love's tiger sometimes rages, but the beast's too tame to bite. We'll — Wislawa Szymborska

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

A thousand and one is still only a thousand. That one seems never to have existed: a — Wislawa Szymborska

I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet. — Wislawa Szymborska

Most of the earth's inhabitants work to get by. They work because they have to. They didn't pick this or that kind of job out of passion; the circumstances of their lives did the choosing for them. 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. And there's no sign that coming centuries will produce any changes for the better as far as this goes. — Wislawa Szymborska

But they know about us, they know, the four corners, and the chairs nearby us. Discerning shadows also know, and even the table keeps quiet. — Wislawa Szymborska

They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway. — Wislawa Szymborska

I slip my arm from underneath his sleeping head -
it's numb, swarming with imaginary pins.
A host of fallen angels perches on each tip,
waiting to be counted. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

When it comes, you'll be dreaming that you don't need to breathe; that breathless silence is the music of the dark and it's part of the rhythm to vanish like a spark. — 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'm drowning in papers. — Wislawa Szymborska

When they said he didn't exist, he couldn't die of grief, so he had to be born. He's already out there living somewhere; he blinks his little eyes and grows. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

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

It's a well-known fact: in order to follow doctor's orders, you have to be healthy as a horse. — Wislawa Szymborska

Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light. — 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

-NONREADING-


Bookstores don't provide
a remote control for Proust,
you can't switch
to a soccer match,
or a quiz show, win a Cadillac.


We live longer
but less precisely
and in shorter sentences.


We travel faster, farther, more often,
but bring back slides instead of memories.
Here I am with some guy.
There I guess that's my ex.
Here everyone's naked
so this must be a beach.


Seven volumes - mercy.
Couldn't it be cut or summarized,
or better yet put into pictures.
There was that series called "The Doll,"
but my sister-in-law says that's some other P.*


And by the way, who was he anyway.
They say he wrote in bed for years on end.
Page after page
at a snail's pace.
But we're still going in fifth gear
and, knock on wood, never better. — Wislawa Szymborska

How light the raindrop's contents are;
how gently the world touches me.

From View With a Grain of Sand — Wislawa Szymborska

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

Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan — Wislawa Szymborska

Woods disguised as woods alive without end, and above them birds in flight play birds in flight. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

We live longer
but less precisely
and in shorter sentences. — Wislawa Szymborska

When I was young I had a moment of believing in the Communist doctrine. I wanted to save the world through Communism. Quite soon I understood that it doesn't work, but I've never pretended it didn't happen to me. — 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

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all.
Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as
my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories
fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second. — Wislawa Szymborska

Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."...That is why I value that little phrase "I don't know" so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include spaces within us as well as the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended...Poets, if they're genuine, must always keep repeating "I don't know. — Wislawa Szymborska

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 loss. — Wislawa Szymborska

So poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their oeuvres. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

My apologies to past loves for treating the latest as the first. — Wislawa Szymborska

We, too, can divide ourselves, it's true. / But only into flesh and a broken whisper. / Into flesh and poetry. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared. — Wislawa Szymborska

Memories come to mind like excavated statues
that have misplaced their heads. — Wislawa Szymborska

I am my own obstacle. — Wislawa Szymborska

Nothing Twice Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice. Even if there is no one dumber, if you're the planet's biggest dunce, you can't repeat the class in summer: this course is only offered once. No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with exactly the same kisses. One day, perhaps, some idle tongue mentions your name by accident: I feel as if a rose were flung into the room, all hue and scent. The next day, though you're here with me, I can't help looking at the clock: A rose? A rose? What could that be? Is it a flower or a rock? Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow? It's in its nature not to stay: today is always gone tomorrow. With smiles and kisses, we prefer to seek accord beneath our star, although we're different (we concur) just as two drops of water are. — Wislawa Szymborska

I'd have to be really quick to describe clouds - a split second's enough for them to start being something else. — Wislawa Szymborska

A Note Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it's not; to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes. An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off; and if only once to stumble upon a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another, mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important. — Wislawa Szymborska

Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry. — Wislawa Szymborska

Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke. — Wislawa Szymborska

In these lands you're a name to avoid, you're bound for defeat, you're a sign pointing out those who must be destroyed. At — Wislawa Szymborska

And whatever I do will become forever what I've done. — Wislawa Szymborska

I've wanted to write about them for a long while,
but it's a tricky subject,
always put off for later
and perhaps worthy of a better poet,
even more stunned by the world than I.
But time is short. I write. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

Memory at last has what I sought. — Wislawa Szymborska

After every war someone has to tidy up. — Wislawa Szymborska

I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised. — 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

I am who I am.
A coincidence no less unthinkable
than any other. — Wislawa Szymborska

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

God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men. — Wislawa Szymborska

Animals don't even try to look any different from what nature intended. They humbly wear their shells, scales, spines, plumes, pelts, and down ... The conscious impulse to change one's appearance is found only among humans. — Wislawa Szymborska