Wisława Szymborska Quotes

My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.

I know I won't be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way. Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

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

Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily declined in human form, just now making such a fuss about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus.

My siblings died the day I left for dry land and only one small bone recalls that anniversary in me.

I lost a few goddesses while moving south to north and also some gods while moving east to west.

I believe in the refusal to take part. I believe in the ruined career. I believe in the wasted years of work. I believe in the secret taken to the grave.

Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different. Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different.

He's no end of fun, for all you say. Poor little beggar. A human, if ever we saw one.

He has only just learned to tell dreams from waking; only just realized that he is he; only just whittled with his hand né fin a flint, a rocket ship; easily drowned in the ocean's teaspoon, not even funny enough to tickle the void: sees only with his eyes; hears only with his ears; his speech's personal best is the conditional; he uses his reason to pick holes in reason. In short, he's next to to one, but his head's full of freedom, omniscience and the Being beyond his foolish meat — did you ever!

So he's got to have happiness, he's got to have truth, too, he's got to have eternity — did you ever!

And only we few who remain unstripped of fur, untorn from bone, unplucked of soaring feathers, esteemed in all our quills, scales, tusks, and horns, and in whatever else that ingenious protein has seen fit to clothe us with, we, my lord, are your dream, which finds you innocent for now.

I am a tarsier and a tarsier's son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out...

Within him, there's awful darkness, in the darkness a small boy. <p> God of humor, do something about him, OK? God of humor, do something about him today.

He feels like a handle broken off a jug, but the jug doesn't know it's broken and keeps going to the well.