Wisława Szymborska Quotes

Buscar sinceridad en unas memorias carece de sentido. Mejor sería preguntarse qué versión de uno mismo y del mundo ha escogido el autor, dado que siempre hay posibilidad de elegir.

No one feels good at four in the morning.
If ants feel good at four in the morning — three cheers for the ants.

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

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.

Memory Finally Memory’s finally found what it was after. My mother has turned up, my father has been spotted. I dreamed up a table and two chairs. They sat. They were mine again, alive again for me. The two lamps of their faces gleamed at dusk as if for Rembrandt. Only now can I begin to tell in how many dreams they’ve wandered, in how many crowds I dragged them out from underneath the wheels, in how many deathbeds they moaned with me at their side. Cut off, they grew back, but never straight. The absurdity drove them to disguises. So what if they felt no pain outside me, they still ached within me. In my dreams, gawking crowds heard me call out Mom to a bouncing, chirping thing up on a branch. They made fun of my father’s hair in pigtails. I woke up ashamed. So, finally. One ordinary Friday night they suddenly came back exactly as I wanted. In a dream, but somehow freed from dreams, obeying just themselves and nothing else. In the picture’s background possibilities grew dim, accidents lacked the necessary shape. Only they shone, beautiful because just like themselves. They appeared to me for a long, long, happy time. I woke up. I opened my eyes. I touched the world, a chiseled picture frame.

My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs. My apologies to great questions for small answers.

Dimenticano che la vita non è qui.
Altre leggi, nero su bianco, vigono qui.
Un batter d’occhio durerà quanto dico io,
si lascerà dividere in piccole eternità
piene di pallottole fermate in volo.
Non una cosa avverrà qui se non voglio.
Senza il mio assenso non cadrà foglia,
né si piegherà stelo sotto il punto del piccolo zoccolo.

C’è dunque un mondo di cui reggo le sorti indipendenti?
Un tempo che lego con catene di segni?
Un esistere a mio comando incessante?
La gioia di scrivere.
Il potere di perpetuare.
La vendetta d’una mano mortale.

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

One more comment from the heart: I’m old fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised. Homo Ludens dances, sings, produces meaningful gestures, strikes poses, dresses up, revels and performs elaborate rituals. I don’t wish to diminish the significance of these distractions-without them human life would pass in unimaginable monotony and possibly dispersion and defeat. But these are group activities above which drifts a more or less perceptible whiff of collective gymnastics. Homo Ludens with a book is free. At least as free as he’s capable of being. He himself makes up the rules of the game, which are subject only to his own curiosity. He’s permitted to read intelligent books, from which he will benefit, as well as stupid ones, from which he may also learn something. He can stop before finishing one book, if he wishes, while starting another at the end and working his way back to the beginning. He may laugh in the wrong places or stop short at words he’ll keep for a life time. And finally, he’s free-and no other hobby can promise this-to eavesdrop on Montaigne’s arguments or take a quick dip in the Mesozoic.

Even a passing moment has its fertile past.

هردو بر اين باورند
كه حسي ناگهاني آنها را به هم پيوند داده.
چنين اطميناني زيباست،
اما ترديد زيبا تر است.

چون قبلا همديگر را نمي شناختند،
گمان مي بردند هرگز چيزي ميان آنها نبوده.
اما نظر خيابان ها، پله ها و راهروهايي

كه آن دو مي توانسته اند از سال ها پيش
از كنار هم گذشته باشند، در اين باره چيست؟

دوست داشتم از آنها بپرسم

آيا به ياد نمي آورند
شايد درون دري چرخان
زماني روبروي هم؟
يك ببخشيد در ازدحام مردم؟
يك صداي اشتباه گرفته ايد در گوشي تلفن؟

- ولي پاسخشان را مي دانم.
- نه، چيزي به ياد نمي آورند.

بسيار شگفت زده مي شدند
اگر مي دانستند، كه ديگر مدت هاست
بازيچه اي در دست اتفاق بوده اند.

هنوز كاملا آماده نشده
كه براي آنها تبديل به سرنوشتي شود،
آنها را به هم نزديك مي كرد دور مي كرد،

جلو راهشان را مي گرفت
و خنده ي شيطانيش را فرو مي خورد و
كنار مي جهيد.

علائم و نشانه هايي بوده
هر چند ناخوانا.
شايد سه سال پيش
يا سه شنبه ي گذشته
برگ درختي از شانه ي يكيشان
به شانه ي ديگري پرواز كرده؟

چيزي بوده كه يكي آن را گم كرده
ديگري آن را يافته و برداشته.

از كجا معلوم توپي در بوته هاي كودكي نبوده باشد؟
دستگيره ها و زنگ درهايي بوده
كه يكيشان لمس كرده و در فاصله اي كوتاه آن ديگري.
چمدان هايي كنار هم در انبار.
شايد يك شب هر دو يك خواب را ديده باشند،
كه بلافاصله بعد از بيدار شدن محو شده.

بالاخره هر آغازي
فقط ادامه ايست
و كتاب حوادث
هميشه از نيمه ي آن باز مي شود.

Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."

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

No carece de encantos un mundo tan terrible, no carece de madrugadas que merecen un despertar.

Estar en casa es tremendamente peligroso. A cada paso que damos hay peligro de muerte o mutilación. Incluso me atrevería a decir que cuantas más comodidades civilizadoras guardamos en casa, mayores son las posibilidades de que nos suceda una catástrofe. Vivir en una caverna era más seguro que todo eso, claro, siempre y cuando no irrumpiera en ella un tigre dientes de sable en ausencia de la gente que se encargaba de cazar.