Quotes By Wislawa Szymborska

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

I'm drowning in papers.

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

Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.

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

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.

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

Somewhere out there the world must have an end.

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.

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

There's simply too much fuss about myself.

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.

Sometimes I really have a spiritual need to say something more general about the world, and sometimes something personal.

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.

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!

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

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

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.

After every war someone has to tidy up.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.