Wislawa Szymborska

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

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

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

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

“You have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.”

“I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.”

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

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

“It's just not easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself.”

“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!”

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

“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.”

“Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. I am near, too near for him to dream of me.”

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

“The killer whale's heart weighs one hundred kilosbut in other respects it is light.There is nothing more animal-likethan a clear conscienceon the third planet of the Sun.”

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

“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.”