William Carlos Williams Quotes

But the sea
which no one tends
is also a garden

At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse — at least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our finger tips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident.

If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.

That which is possible is inevitable.

It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time.

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

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

My surface is myself.
Under which
to witness, youth is
buried. Roots?
Everybody has roots.

A poem is this:/A nuance of sound/delicately operating/upon a cataract of sense/...the particulars/of a song waking/upon a bed of sound.

THE THOUGHTFUL LOVER

Deny yourself all
half things. Have it
or leave it.

But it will keep — or
it is not worth
the having.

Never start
anything you can't
finish — However do not lose
faith because you
are starved!

She loves you
she says. Believe it — tomorrow.

But today
the particulars
of poetry

that difficult art
require
your whole attention.

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.

All women are not Helen, I know that, but have Helen in their hearts.

I think these days when there is so little to believe in — — when the old loyalties — — God, country, and the hope of Heaven — — aren't very real, we are more dependent than we should be on our friends. The only thing left to believe in — — someone who seems beautiful.

The descent beckons
as the ascent beckoned

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.