Wislawa Szymborska(1923-2012)

Was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing? (In her Nobel lecture, joking about how great movies can be made of the lives of scientists and artists, but poets' lives offer far less promising material)