Dejan Stojanovic

Dejan Stojanoviæ was born in Pec, Kosovo (the former Yugoslavia), in 1959. Although a lawyer by education, he has never practiced law and instead became a journalist. He is a poet, essayist, philosopher, and businessman and published six critically acclaimed books of poetry in Serbia: "Circling," "The Sun Watches the Sun," "The Sign and Its Children," "The Shape," "The Creator," and "Dance of Time." In 1986, as a young writer, he was recognized among 200 writers at the Bor (former Yugoslavia) Literary Festival. He also received the prestigious "Rastko Petrovic" Award from the Society of Serbian Writers for his book of interviews with major European and American artists and writers. In addition to poetry and prose, he has worked as a correspondent for the Serbian weekly magazine "Pogledi" ("Views"). His book of interviews from 1990 to 1992 in Europe and America, entitled Conversations, included interviews with several major American writers, including Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, Charles Simic, and Steve Tesic. He has been living in Chicago since 1990.

261 Quotes (Page 1 of 3)

The universe is God’s son.

Dejan Stojanovic

Serious affairs and history are carefully laid snares for the uninformed.

Dejan Stojanovic

Creators of history always play with our impotence and our ignorance.

Dejan Stojanovic

I wanted to write the most beautiful poem But that is impossible; The world has written its own.

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Cosmos is God, who whispered the syllable of life.

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Life is only a flicker of melted ice.

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Stars are only the rain of the Absolute.

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God is a cloud from which rain fell.

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Darkness does not age; nothing is always nothing.

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In the essence of truth lies deceit. Deceit dispels the boredom of the Absolute.

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Absolute is a game with only one player where Absolute forgets itself so it would have a reason to fulfill the motion while returning.

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Absolute equals nothingness.

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Omnipotence and omniscience are the end of power and knowledge.

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Everything and nothing are the same in the Absolute.

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Procreation annihilates eternity.

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Existence is the end of endless eternity without a beginning or an end.

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Unborn eternity does not die; existence is dying and falls asleep in the eternity beyond existence.

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Eternity is a glorious word but eternity is ice.

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Knighthood lies above eternity; it doesn’t live off fame, but rather deeds.

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Our eternity is not real; it resembles us; it is our own invention; its scent is vanity.

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When following God, Zero we never find.

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Infinity is the end. End without infinity is but a new beginning.

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The world is God’s salvation.

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Sun is a hearthstone, a merry-go-round of extinguished hearthstones.

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Universe is the Sun watching its own self.

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The world is a fairy tale; we are its guardians.

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Two forces create eternity – a fairy tale and a dream from the fairy tale.

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God is busy and has no time for you.

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Get close to grass and you’ll see a star.

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Arrival in the world is really a departure and that, which we call departure, is only a return.

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The same word we love and hate, leaves in different directions, taking different paths.

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Through words to the meaning of thoughts with no words.

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Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters.

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How many unuttered words died in the heads of those for whom a word was too expensive.

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Everybody talks, but there is no conversation.

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We hear only our own voices, still echoes returning to our emptiness.

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When the long bygone Lee Po wanted to say something, he could do it with only a few words.

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We forget old stories, but those stories remain the same.

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How alive is thought, invisible, yet without thought there is no sight.

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The deeper thought is, the taller she becomes.

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A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.

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Truth is hard-hearted and unrelenting, too clear, precise; a lie is much more imaginative.

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In the lie of truth lies the truth.

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Teaching others, he corrected himself.

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He did not waste time in a vain search for a place in history.

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After Homer and Dante, is a whole century of creating worth one Shakespeare?

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How does one say something new and not retell?

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Either all lights are turned off or one inner light is missing.

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He did not profess to anybody how to reach others without professing.

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You not only are hunted by others, you unknowingly hunt yourself.

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Do not look too far for you will see nothing.

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Either you will be you or you will not be at all.

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We need knew knights, but without swords.

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Come out from within yourself, speak out.

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Say No! Accept the burdens of revenge.

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Wherever there is somebody else, a war is not far away.

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Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself.

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A breeze, a forgotten summer, a smile, all can fit into a storefront window.

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We built tall buildings, but we have not become any taller.

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Whatever others may say, they say it to deceive and comfort themselves, not help you.

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His Highness was always confident in his statements, especially about what he viewed for the first time.

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Now that we are all so smart, we don’t easily find resolutions.

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He thought others were small; that was his greatness.

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This dwarf still observes the world from his own self-imposed height.

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If you could have walked on the planet before humans lived here, maybe the Ivory Coast would have seemed more beautiful than La Côte d'Azur.

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We measure everything by ourselves with almost a necessary conceit.

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There are no winners in real games.

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The game itself is bigger than the winning.

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You mark and celebrate errors, transforming failures into successes.

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Statesmen are grocers, ambitious clowns.

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For a game, you don’t need a teacher.

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Faith is a question of eyesight; even the blind can see that.

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Holy books are an insult to a God with good intentions.

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Christ did not ask or want to be what he was not.

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Burning the witch Giordano Bruno is one more wound inflicted on Christ’s body.

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Your head is a lit chamber.

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The light teaches you to convert life into a festive promenade.

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What we call life is only talk of nature.

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Nothing is inanimate; what is the rest is our interpretation.

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We like to admit to only that which already glows, although it is nobler to support brightness before it glows, not afterwards.

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It is easy to see the glow but hard to recognize the awakening of silence.

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Disease often comes with a smiling face.

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Strangers are endearing because you don’t know them yet.

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He confided his deepest secret to you; be always wary of his secret.

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Don’t pay attention to those who offer too much.

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Is it possible to write a poem or are these words just screams of outlaws exiled to the desert?

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It’s not easy to write a poem about a poem.

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You don’t know anything, but I know even less.

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If you are good, they say you are weak.

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If what we think of ourselves were true, the planet would overflow with geniuses. They blossomed; they did not talk about blossoming. They grew; they did not talk about growing.

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Pose your questions to people and you will get countless useless answers.

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From whichever side I start, I think I am in an old place where others have been before me.

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For a moment at least, be a smile on someone else’s face.

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Beyond all vanities, fights, and desires, omnipotent silence lies.

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There are many secrets; don’t try to resolve them all.

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They are both spectacular, life and death.

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In greatness, life and death merge.

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Nothing is made, nothing disappears. These are the old truths. The same changes, at the same places, never stopping.

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He will understand when it is too late that it is easier to love.

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Wherever I go, I run into myself.

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