W. S. Merwin Quotes

Quotes about:

Earth Rain Silence Writing

From what we cannot hold the stars are made.

W. S. Merwin

Stars, Made

"Bill Moyers Journal", www.pbs.org. June 26, 2009.

66 Copy quote
We are not born to survive. Only to live.

W. S. Merwin

Life, Live Life, Born

29 Copy quote
On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree

W. S. Merwin

Tree, World, Want

"Bill Moyers Journal" with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. June 26, 2009.

57 Copy quote
Obviously a garden is not the wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, it’s appearance, to human design and effort, human conventions and convenience, and the human pursuit of that elusive, indefinable harmony that we call beauty. It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows. It is only the humans in it who think of it as a garden. But a garden is a relationship, which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished.

W. S. Merwin

Garden, Thinking, Design

55 Copy quote
I needed my mistakes in their order to get me here

W. S. Merwin

Mistake, Order, My Mistakes

11 Copy quote
We are asleep with compasses in our hands.

W. S. Merwin

Hands, Compass

57 Copy quote
Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

W. S. Merwin

I Miss You, Missing You, Missing Someone

William Stanley Merwin, “Separation”

81 Copy quote
Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You've got to stop what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what you're expecting and just be there for the poem for however long it takes.

W. S. Merwin

Art, Simple, Thinking

45 Copy quote
I say to my breath once again, little breath come from in front of me, go away behind me, row me quietly now, as far as you can, for I am an abyss that I am trying to cross.

W. S. Merwin

Going Away, Trying, Littles

53 Copy quote
Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.

W. S. Merwin

Art, World, Way

42 Copy quote
The story of each stone leads back to a mountain.

W. S. Merwin

Mountain, Stories, Stones

41 Copy quote
I think there's a kind of desperate hope built into poetry that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there's still time.

W. S. Merwin

Thinking, Trying, World

51 Copy quote
Your absence has gone through me

W. S. Merwin

Missing You, Gone, Absence

William Stanley Merwin, “Separation”

67 Copy quote
Sitting over words
Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
Not far
Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
The echo of everything that has ever
Been spoken
Still spinning its one syllable
Between the earth and silence.

W. S. Merwin

Dark, Night, Echoes

"Utterance". Poem by W. S. Merwin, gladdestthing.com.

15 Copy quote
What you remember saves you.

W. S. Merwin

Remember

17 Copy quote
Now all my teachers are dead except silence.

W. S. Merwin

Teacher, Silence

35 Copy quote
What I really believe is the only hopeful relation between our life and the whole of life is one of reverence and respect and of feeling at one with it. The other attitude which is the one our society is based on is devastating and it is killing the earth and it is killing us too.

W. S. Merwin

Attitude, Believe, Hopeful

35 Copy quote
We are the echo of the future.

W. S. Merwin

Future, Echoes

William Stanley Merwin, “The River Of Bees”

13 Copy quote
Laughter was the shape the darkness took around the first appearance of the light.

W. S. Merwin

Laughter, Light, Darkness

29 Copy quote
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands. What you do not have you find everywhere

W. S. Merwin

Hands, Emptiness

24 Copy quote
I have with me all that I do not knowI have lost none of it.

W. S. Merwin

Lost, Knows

"Bill Moyers Journal", www.pbs.org. June 26, 2009.

29 Copy quote
I also think that life itself is both indifferent to us and the source of all of our joys and everything that we love. And it's necessary to accept the one in order to love the other.

W. S. Merwin

Thinking, Order, Joy

"An Interview with W. S. Merwin, Poet Laureat". Interview with Ed Rampell, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. October 25, 2010.

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come back believer in shade believer in silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain

W. S. Merwin

Rain, Silence, Shade

63 Copy quote
You grieve Not that heaven does not exist but That it exists without us

W. S. Merwin

Grieving, Heaven, Doe

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When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.

W. S. Merwin

Moving, Mean, Can't Change

"Bill Moyers Journal", www.pbs.org. June 26, 2009.

26 Copy quote

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Latest quotes from interviews

"I think it's good for anybody to learn languages. Americans are particularly limited in that way. Europeans less so... We're beginning to have Spanish move in on English in the states because of all the people coming from Hispanic countries... and we're beginning to learn some Spanish. And I think that's a good thing... Only having one language is very limiting... You get to think that's the way the human race is made; there's only one language worth speaking... Well, this isn't good for English."

- W. S. Merwin,

www.progressive.org, added Jan 3, 2016

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W. S. Merwin

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Born: September 30, 1927
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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