Wislawa Szymborska's Quotes
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 SzymborskaAny knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.
Wislawa SzymborskaI 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 SzymborskaPoetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
Wislawa SzymborskaIn 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 SzymborskaI cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
Wislawa SzymborskaUnfortunately, 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.
Wislawa SzymborskaSolitude 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 SzymborskaNothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.
Wislawa SzymborskaKeep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.
Wislawa SzymborskaLet 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 SzymborskaAll the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
Wislawa Szymborska