William Carlos Williams Quotes

We sit and talk,quietly, with long lapses of silenceand I am aware of the streamthat has no language, coursingbeneath the quiet heaven ofyour eyeswhich has no speech

~ William Carlos Williams

You lethargic, waiting upon me,waiting for the fire and Iattendant upon you, shaken by your beautyShaken by your beauty Shaken.

~ William Carlos Williams

Your thighs are appletrees. Your knees are a southern breeze.

~ William Carlos Williams

It is at the edge of the petal that love waits

~ William Carlos Williams

It is difficultto get the news from poemsyet men die miserably every dayfor lackof what is found there.

~ William Carlos Williams

so much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens.

~ William Carlos Williams

beauty’ is related not to ‘loveliness’ but to a state in which reality plays a part.

~ William Carlos Williams

The business of love is cruelty which,by our wills, we transform to live together.

~ William Carlos Williams

The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

~ William Carlos Williams

To imitate nature involves the verb to do. To copy is merely to reflect something already there, inertly: Shakespeare's mirror is all that is needed for it. But by imitation we enlarge nature itself, we become nature or we discover in ourselves nature's active part.

~ William Carlos Williams

There is nothing sacred about literature, it is damned from one end to the other. There is nothing in literature but change and change is mockery. I'll write whatever I damn please, whenever I damn please and as I damn please and it'll be good if the authentic spirit of change is on it.

~ William Carlos Williams

Imagination though it cannot wipe out the sting of remorse can instruct the mind in its proper uses.

~ William Carlos Williams

But the seawhich no one tendsis also a garden

~ William Carlos Williams

I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the poet is.

~ William Carlos Williams

A man is indeed a city, and for the poet there are no ideas but in things.

~ William Carlos Williams

The HurricaneThe tree lay downon the garage roof and stretched, You have your heaven, it said, go to it.

~ William Carlos Williams

Hold back the edges of your gown, Ladies, we are going through hell.

~ William Carlos Williams

There is no thing that with a twist of the imagination cannot be something else. Porpoises risen in a green sea, the wind at nightfall bending the rose- red grasses and you- in your apron hurrying to catch- say it seems to you to be your son. How ridiculous! You will pass up into a cloud and look back at me, not count the scribbling foolish that put wings at your heels, at your knees.

~ William Carlos Williams

Remorse is a virtue in that it is a stirrer up of the emotions but it is a folly to accept it is a criticism of conduct.

~ William Carlos Williams

But time in only another liar, so go along the wall a little further: if blackberries prove bitter there'll be mushrooms, fairy-ring mushrooms in the grass, sweetest of all fungi.

~ William Carlos Williams

Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and images… It is not a conscious recording of the day’s experiences ‘freshly and with the appearance of reality’… The writer of imagination would find himself released from observing things for the purpose of writing them down later. He would be there to enjoy, to taste, to engage the free world, not a world which he carries like a bag of food, always fearful lest he drop something or someone get more than he.

~ William Carlos Williams

We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness. Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels.

~ William Carlos Williams

What can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past.

~ William Carlos Williams

What can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past.

~ William Carlos Williams

Time is a storm in which we are all lost.

~ William Carlos Williams