Quote by Wisława Szymborska: “Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.”

Nothing truly starts from zero. Every moment you call a beginning is already the middle of something older — a history you were born into, a story already in progress. What feels like a fresh start is really just the latest chapter. The past is always already there.

This line comes from Szymborska's poem 'Love at First Sight,' published in her 1993 collection The End and the Beginning. Post-communist Poland was undergoing enormous transformation — new political systems, new freedoms, and new uncertainties. The poem meditates on chance, fate, and the illusion that our stories begin when we think they do.

Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. Her poetry is celebrated for its wit, philosophical precision, and ability to find the extraordinary in ordinary experience. Collections such as View with a Grain of Sand brought her an international readership who treasured her ironic humanism.