photographers-from-poland

"But I'm unlucky. Yesterday, when I was pissing in the forest and looking at the landscape, a horsefly bit me in the dick. It swelled up like a balloon and I thought it was going to fall off. But iodine and Staroniewicz saved this valuable utensils for future generations. Today it is only red, but maybe it will fall off. If it falls off, I will send it to you in formaldehyde."

"And could God, if he wanted to, create another God, the same - after all, he is omnipotent. Then he wouldn't be bored."

"And yet it is good, everything is good. What? – maybe not? It's fine, damn it, and whoever says no, I'll punch him in the face!"

"I hate her for having to love her so much."

"There is nothing great and beautiful except death."

"What would he give to be able to be, with a clear conscience, a homosexual, an artist, a cocaine addict - in general, an "ist", it doesn't matter what type - he even envied sportsmen's sports mania. And he was just a complicated metaphysical masochist."

"Washing the entire skin with soap every day is the duty of everyone who wants to consider themselves human."

"Why do most people who absolutely shouldn't stink do stink?"

"And life could be so beautiful, so terribly cool: Kaśka and I, after a whole day of inhuman work, would have a big beer!"

"I want pretty women and lots of beer. And I can only drink two large ones and always with this Kaśka, always with this Kaśka - damn it!..."

"Society is a woman - it must have a male that rapes it."

"Whore in mayonnaise! What can such a poor guy not come up with! I have to try!"

"You have to have great tact, To finish the third act. It's not an illusion - it's a fact."

"I must live with everything I have been given, if I am ever unified, it means that I am holding all the scattered sparks that make me up."

"Other than that, everything is shit – everything except philosophy, that is. Without her, I'd be just a piece of shit."

"There are rumors about me, sucked from the big toe of someone's dirty leg."

"I despise everyone and I am so disgusted with the intellectual rabble that it makes me vomit."

"Politics is a great art. It succeeds at convincing the people that they have to pay for what has been stolen from them."

"Nie Kolumb pierwszy odkrył Amerykę, ale pierwszy ją opatentował."

"Współczesne cywilizacje są mocno skomputerroryzowane."

"Nienawiść jest jak Hydra, im więcej głów ścinasz, tym bardziej ją wzmacniasz."

"Niewolnik marzy o wolności, człowiek wolny o bogactwie, bogacz o władzy, a władca o wolności."

"The tragedy of a thoughtless man is not that he doesn't think, but that he thinks that he's thinking."

"Never curse an illness; better ask for health."

"Man invented the car to comfortably sit in jams."

"Women are beautiful in the light of the day, but are even more so in the shadows of the night."

"Man invented clothing to cover the superficial and to discover the inside."

"The first true love is always the last one."

"If you do not want it to rain, always carry an umbrella."

"A woman withers when she is watered only with tears."

"The experience was an exciting one for me. It illustrated that writing was about risk—about risking everything. And that the value of the writing is not in what you publish but in its consequences. If you set out to describe reality, then the influence of the writing is upon reality."

"(Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?) A friend once called “The Shadow of the Sun,” by Ryszard Kapuscinski, an “authentic” reportage voice on Africa. I disagreed. I think it is a fictional portrait masquerading as nonfiction, about an Africa that he wanted to see rather than one he actually saw. It misrepresents many practices and beliefs in different countries, and its many generalizations about “the African” are fatuous. To this, the friend said that it didn’t matter if he got the facts wrong because the book was really an allegory of communism. It was eye-opening for me, and made me see this friend differently, because of the paternalism in that opinion. If I were to write a nonfiction book riddled with inaccuracies about Europe and then insisted that it really was an allegory on military dictatorship in Nigeria, few would find that acceptable and fewer still would praise it as the authentic voice on Europe."

"Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat."

"It is authority that provokes revolution....This occurs when a feeling of impunity takes root among the elite: We are allowed anything, we can do anything. This is a delusion, but it rests on a certain rational foundation. For a while it does indeed look as if they can do whatever they want. Scandal after scandal and illegality after illegality go unpunished. The people remain silent...They are afraid and do not yet feel their own strength. At the same time, they keep a detailed account of the wrongs, which at one particular moment are to be added up. The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle of history."

"Even though you can destroy a man, destroying him does not make him cease to exist. On the contrary, if I can put it this way, he begins to exist all the more. These are paradoxes no tyrant can deal with. The scythe swings, and at once the grass starts to grow back. Cut again and the grass grows faster than ever. A very comforting law of nature."