Quotes from Czeslaw Milosz

The Universal City will be realized when a son of the Kirghiz steppes waters his horses in the Loire, and a Sicilian peasant plants cotton in Turkmen valleys. Small wonder the writer smiles at propaganda that cries for a freeing of colonies from the grasp of imperialistic powers. Oh, how cunning dialectics can be, and how artfully it can accomplish its ends, degree by degree!

Farewell Piorewiczowna, unasked for shadow I don't even remember your first name.

All over the world people are now sleeping in their beds, or perhaps they are engaged in some idiotic pastime; and one might easily believe that each in his own way is doing his best to deserve destruction. But that destruction will bring no freedom.

Poetry is the passionate pursuit of the real.

I should be dead already, but there's work to do.

If the world is divided between Fascism and Communism, obviously Fascism must lose since it is the last, desperate refuge of the bourgeoisie

Sceptical Ketman is widely disseminated throughout intellectual circles. One argues that humanity does not know how to handle its knowledge or how to resolve the problems of production and division of goods.

They needed me only in misfortune, To conjure heavenly powers. So they could come and be saved From a tumor in the lungs or a viral infection.

The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships all over the seas.

When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.