#us

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

— Wislawa Szymborska

#book #even #give #something #think

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

#big #collectively #i #individual #like

Each of us has a very rich nature and can look at things objectively, from a distance, and at the same time can have something more personal to say about them. I am trying to look at the world, and at myself, from many different points of view. I think many poets have this duality. ↗

— Wislawa Szymborska

#am #different #different points #distance #duality

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

— Wislawa Szymborska

#again #cannot #exclusively #hour #i

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. ↗

— Wislawa Szymborska

#foreground #growing #i #into #life

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

— Wislawa Szymborska

#bad #fighting #i #many #poet

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. ↗

— Wislawa Szymborska

#anything #claim #fuss #i #know

In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed. ↗

— Wislawa Szymborska

#element #every #just #preserved #reversed

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 all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world. ↗

— Wislawa Szymborska

#after #anyone #cloud #day #every

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. ↗

— Wislawa Szymborska

#born #bus #certainty #crowds #four