Polish Author Quotes

Joseph Conrad

Stanisław Lem

Wisława Szymborska

Witold Gombrowicz

Zbigniew Herbert

Bruno Schulz

Andrzej Sapkowski

It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.

The demand for absolute purity of genres is becoming nowadays an anachronism in literature.

Once I appealed to distinguish words "gay" and "homosexual" (...). "Gayship" is a political homosexualism, a sort of left-wing ideology based on a bias against traditional lifestyle (...). Homosexualism is a sexual preference.

Rafał A. Ziemkiewicz

The heathen spirit is wingless. It cannot lift itself to heights from which the totality of being is visible, and it therefore loses itself in details.

People," Geralt turned his head, "like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.

Andrzej Sapkowski

Now the windows, blinded by the glare of the empty square, had fallen asleep. The balconies declared their emptiness to heaven; the open doorways smelt of coolness and wine.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.

Jerzy Kosiński

We say 'forest' but this word is made of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the unencompassed. The earth. Clods of dirt. Pebbles. On a clear day you rest among ordinary, everyday things that have been familiar to you since childhood, grass, bushes, a dog (or a cat), a chair, but that changes when you realize that every object is an enormous army, an inexhaustible swarm.

Witold Gombrowicz

[About the diaspora] Canaan is too small for God's children. The Land of Israel will spread through all lands!

Isaac Leib Peretz

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

Wisława Szymborska

Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
Let the radiant thought last in stillness
though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers
We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves.

Adam Zagajewski

I don't agree with mathematics; the sum total of zeros is a frightening figure.

Stanisław Jerzy Lec

I thank You Lord for creating the world beautiful and various and if this is Your seduction I am seduced for good and past all forgiveness

Zbigniew Herbert

Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you. Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth.

Edward Yashinsky