Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.
Sometimes I really have a spiritual need to say something more general about the world, and sometimes something personal.
'There's nothing new under the sun': that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun.
All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.
You have to remember all the time that there is a comical side to everything.
This terrifying world is not devoid of charms, of the mornings that make waking up worthwhile.
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'm fighting against the bad poet who is prone to using too many words.
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?
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.
Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and later try hard to make them seem light.
Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.
Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. I am near, too near for him to dream of me.
I cannot speak for more than an hour exclusively about poetry. At that point, life itself takes over again.
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.
I started earning a living as a poet rather early on.
I'm drowning in papers.
Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice.
Poetic talent doesn't operate in a vacuum. There is a spirit of Polish poetry.
