Wislawa Szymborska Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“After every war someone has to tidy up.”

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

“You know, I'm worried about Szymborska. I wish she would stop smoking.”

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

“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.”

“I'm drowning in papers.”