Nonrequired Reading Quotes

“I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.”
― Wislawa Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading

“One more comment from the heart: I’m old fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised. Homo Ludens dances, sings, produces meaningful gestures, strikes poses, dresses up, revels and performs elaborate rituals. I don’t wish to diminish the significance of these distractions-without them human life would pass in unimaginable monotony and possibly dispersion and defeat. But these are group activities above which drifts a more or less perceptible whiff of collective gymnastics. Homo Ludens with a book is free. At least as free as he’s capable of being. He himself makes up the rules of the game, which are subject only to his own curiosity. He’s permitted to read intelligent books, from which he will benefit, as well as stupid ones, from which he may also learn something. He can stop before finishing one book, if he wishes, while starting another at the end and working his way back to the beginning. He may laugh in the wrong places or stop short at words he’ll keep for a life time. And finally, he’s free-and no other hobby can promise this-to eavesdrop on Montaigne’s arguments or take a quick dip in the Mesozoic.”
― Wisława Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading

“soy una persona anticuada que cree que leer libros es el pasatiempo más hermoso que la humanidad ha creado.”
― Wislawa Szymborska, Lecturas no obligatorias: Prosas

“Would we really be driven to darkest despair by the news that life doesn’t exist beyond Earth? (…) But let’s stop and think about such a revelation. Would that really be the worst of all possible news? Perhaps just the opposite—it would sober us, brace us, teach us mutual respect, point us toward a slightly more human way of life? Perhaps we wouldn’t talk so much nonsense, tell so many lies, if we knew that they were echoing throughout the cosmos? Maybe a single, other life would finally gain the value it deserves, the value of a phenomenon, a revelation, a specimen unique to the entire universe?”
― Wisława Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading

“I have no idea who dreamed up the idiotic notion that summer vacations require "light" reading. Just the opposite, since the "light" books get read—if any reading's done at all—before bedtime, after the office work and house work, when we lack the concentration required for heavier fare.”
― Wisława Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading

“Estar en casa es tremendamente peligroso. A cada paso que damos hay peligro de muerte o mutilación. Incluso me atrevería a decir que cuantas más comodidades civilizadoras guardamos en casa, mayores son las posibilidades de que nos suceda una catástrofe. Vivir en una caverna era más seguro que todo eso, claro, siempre y cuando no irrumpiera en ella un tigre dientes de sable en ausencia de la gente que se encargaba de cazar.”
― Wislawa Szymborska, Lecturas no obligatorias: Prosas

“Me parece que solo será a partir de la próxima generación cuando caminar se convierta en algo vanguardista.”
― Wisława Szymborska, Lecturas no obligatorias: Prosas

“Buscar sinceridad en unas memorias carece de sentido. Mejor sería preguntarse qué versión de uno mismo y del mundo ha escogido el autor, dado que siempre hay posibilidad de elegir.”
― Wisława Szymborska, Lecturas no obligatorias: Prosas

“Soñamos, ¡pero tan negligentemente, tan a la ligera! «Quiero ser un pájaro», dice este o aquel. Pero si el sumiso destino lo convirtiese en un pavo, se sentiría desencantado.”
― Wislawa Szymborska, Lecturas no obligatorias: Prosas

“Las aves domésticas se distinguen de las de corral en que las guardamos en jaulas exclusivamente para satisfacer el placer estético. El nuestro, claro. Del placer que sienten las aves condenadas a ver a sus dueños, no sé nada.”
― Wisława Szymborska, Lecturas no obligatorias: Prosas

“Goodness is helpless without wits”
― Wisława Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading

“Dear Critics, since you employ the term "absurd humor," you should introduce its counterpart, "absurd seriousness." Learn to distinguish between forced and primitive seriousness, lighthearted and gallows seriousness. This bracingly sensical conception will jump-start critics and journalists alike. Do we not require, in life as in art, indiscriminate seriousness? bawdy seriousness? sparkling seriousness? spirited seriousness? I would read with pleasure about thinker X's "terrific sense of seriousness," about bard Ys "pearls of seriousness," about avant-garde Z's "offensive seriousness." Some reviewer or other will finally decide to remark that "playwright N. N.'s feeble play is redeemed by the effervescent seriousness of its conclusion" or that "in W.S's poetry one catches notes of unintentional seriousness." And why don't humor magazines have columns of seriousness? And why, moreover, do we have so many humor magazines and so few serious ones? Well?”
― Wisława Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading