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Show me your little poem
and I'll tell you why it wasn't written
any earlier or later than it was.Oh no, you've got me wrong.
Keep your funny piece of paper
with its scribbles.
All I need for my ends
is your layer of dirt
and the long gone
smell of burning.

— Wisława Szymborska Poems New and Collected (1998)

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More quotes by Wisława Szymborska

Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists.

The Poet and the World (1996)

For the sake of research,
the big picture
and definitive conclusions,
one would have to transcend time,
in which everything scurries and whirls.

Poems New and Collected (1998)

They were neither good nor evil now — every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.

Poems New and Collected (1998)

Toy balloon
once kidnapped by the wind —
come home, and I will say:
There are no children here.

Poems New and Collected (1998)

Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different.
Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different.

Poems New and Collected (1998)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Wisława Szymborska (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.