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" 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! "

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" 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

Anything

Herd

Grind

" 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. "

" Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Wislawa Szymborska

Think

Something

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

" After every war someone has to tidy up. "

Wislawa Szymborska

War

Tidy

" I'm drowning in papers. "

Wislawa Szymborska

Papers

Drowning

" 'There's nothing new under the sun': that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. "

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

Wislawa Szymborska

Worthwhile

Waking Up

" Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand. "

" Somewhere out there the world must have an end. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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

People

Live

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

Wislawa Szymborska

Imperfection

Small

" 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. "

" There's simply too much fuss about myself. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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