List of W. S. Merwin Quotes

The Attempt To Live That Way, The Attempt To Treat Everybody - It Fails All The Time - But The Attempt To Treat People As Equals Is A Good Attempt. It's A Very Good Attempt. And There Have Been Very Few Governments That Have Come Anywhere Near It In The Past. The Greeks Began To, The Romans Began To - They Both Failed.

If You Can't Bear What's Happening To The Natural World, If You Can't Bear The Way We Treat Each Other; If You Can't Bear Wars, You Just Can't Bear The Whole Idea Of War, Which Is Possibly Unavoidable. But Still, You Resist It. Because You Just Hate Our Treating Each Other That Way And Causing That Suffering.

The Divine Comedy Is A Political Poem And When You Say Poetry Is Not About - He's Always Quoted Out Of Context, That "poetry Makes Nothing Happen," That Doesn't Mean You Shrug Your Shoulders And Don't Try To Make Anything Happen. And Dante Felt That Poetry Was Engaged, There Was A Point Of View; It's Not My Point Of View, It's Orthodox Medieval Christianity, And I Have My Troubles With That. He Didn't Feel That You Could Just Rule Out So Important A Section Of Life - We Care About These Things, And It's Out Of Caring About Them That We Write Poetry.

If There'd Been A Better-balanced Society, Where There Were Other Ways Of Making A Decent Living, I Think It Might Have Been Different. That's Not The Way This Setup Work.

There Are Aspects Of Human Life That Are Not Purely Destructive, And There Is A Need To Pay Attention To The Things Around Us While They Are Still Around Us. And You Know, In A Way, If You Don't Pay That Attention, The Anger Is Just Bitterness.

I Had Hardly Begun To Read I Asked How Can You Ever Be Sure That What You Write Is Really Any Good At All And He Said You Can't You Can't You Can Never Be Sure You Die Without Knowing Whether Anything You Wrote Was Any Good If You Have To Be Sure Don't Write

To Succeed [,] Consider What Is As Though It Were Past, Deem Yourself Inevitable And Take Credit For It. If You No Longer Believe, Enlarge The Temple.

But Most Love Poetry Is Awful; Nobody Knows How To Write Good Love Poetry Either. But That's Not A Reason Not To Write Love Poetry. Some Of The Best Poetry Ever Written Has Been Love Poetry, And Some Of The Greatest Poetry Ever Written Has Been Political Poetry.

My Words Are The Garment Of What I Shall Never Be Like The Tucked Sleeve Of A One-armed Boy.

My Cradle Was A Shoe.

Through All Of Youth I Was Looking For You Without Knowing What I Was Looking For Part Memory Part Distance Remaining Mine In The Ways That I Learn To Miss You From What We Cannot Hold The Stars Are Made.

Through All Of Youth I Was Looking For You Without Knowing What I Was Looking For