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

A Word On Statistics-Out of every hundred people, those who always know better:fifty-two.Unsure of every step:almost all the rest. Ready to help,if it doesn’t take long:forty-nine. Always good,because they cannot be otherwise:fourwell, maybe five. Able...

I slide my arm from under the sleeper’s head and it is numb, full of swarming pins, on the tip of each, waiting to be counted, the fallen angels sit.

No one in my family has ever died of love. What happened, happened, but nothing myth-inspiring.

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 loss.

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

I am telling himwhat he wants to hear: antsdying of love underthe constellation of the dandelion.I swear that a white rose,sprinkled with wine, sings.I am laughing, tiltingmy head carefullyas if checking an invention.I am dancing,...

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

Keep up the good work, if only for a while, if only for the twinkling of a tiny galaxy.

I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.

Any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life.

No one feels good at four in the morning.If ants feel good at four in the morning—three cheers for the ants.

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

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

TeenagerMe—a teenager? If she suddenly stood, here, now, before me, would I need to treat her as near and dear, although she’s strange to me, and distant? Shed a tear, kiss her brow for the...

All is mine but nothing owned, nothing owned for memory, and mine only while I look.

Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice.

I’m drowning in papers.

Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan. Out of every hundred people, those who always know better: fifty-two.

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.Scruples are alien to the black panther.Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.The self-critical jackal does not exist.The locust, alligator,...

Poetic talent doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.

Life lasts but a few scratches of the claw in the sand.

Out of a hundred people:Those who always know better- 52Doubting every step- all the restGlad to lend a hand if it doesn’t take too long- as high as 49Always good, because they can’t be otherwise-...

Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice.

We have a soul at times.No one’s got it non-stop,for keeps.Day after day,year after yearmay pass without it.Sometimesit will settle for awhileonly in childhood’s fears and raptures.Sometimes only in astonishmentthat we are old.It rarely lends...

I don’t know the role I’m playing. I only know it’s mine, non-convertible.

Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind.

When it comes, you’ll be dreamingthat you don’t need to breathe;that breathless silence isthe music of the darkand it’s part of the rhythmto vanish like a spark.

This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.

When I pronounce the word Future,the first syllable already belongs to the past.When I pronounce the word Silence,I destroy it.

Poorly prepared for the dignity of life, I barely keep up with the pace of the action imposed. Reality demands.

After every war someone has to tidy up.

The joy of writing.The power of preserving.Revenge of a mortal hand.

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

Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven’t got even that much, however loveless and boring–this is one of the harshest human miseries.

Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don’t like to joke.

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

A Note Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything...

I like being near the top of a mountain. One can’t get lost here.

We live longerbut less preciselyand in shorter sentences.

Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune’s darlings.

You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects.

Four billion people on this earthbut my imagination is still the same.It’s bad with large numbers.It’s still taken by particularity.It flits in the dark like a flashlight,illuminating only random faceswhile all the rest go by,never...

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

The world, whatever we might think about it terrified by its vastness and by our helplessness in the face of it, embittered by its indifference to individual suffering—of people, animals, and perhaps also plants, for...

Somewhere out there the world must have an end.

Carry on, then, if only for the moment that it takes a tiny galaxy to blink!

A Hard Life With MemoryI’m a poor audience for my memory.She wants me to attend her voice nonstop,but I fidget, fuss,listen and don’t,step out, come back, then leave again.She wants all my time and attention.She’s...

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

They’re both convincedthat a sudden passion joined them.Such certainty is beautiful,but uncertainty is more beautiful still.Since they’d never met before, they’re surethat there’d been nothing between them.But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways–perhaps...