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. Thats what writing is all about. – Wislawa Szymborska
Let the people who never find true love keep saying that theres no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die. – Wislawa Szymborska
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 anyones existence in this world. – Wislawa Szymborska
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
A knowledge of general literature is one of the evidences of an enlightened mind; and to give an apt quotation at a fitting time, proves that the mind is stored with sentential lore that can always be used to great advantage by its possessor. – James Ellis, quoted in Day’s Collacon: An Encyclopædia of Prose Quota