Quotes by Wisława Szymborska

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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 a...”

“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.”

“Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.”

“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 re...”

“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.”

“When it comes, you’ll be dreamingthat you don’t need to breathe;that breathless silence isthe music of the darkand it’s part of the rhythmto vanish like a spark.”

“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 eve...”

“Four billion people on this earthbut 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 f...”

“The joy of writing.The power of preserving.Revenge of a mortal hand.”

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