I think poetry is as old as language, and both come out of the same thing – an effort to try to express something that is inexpressible. W. S. Merwin Read Quote
As soon as I could write with a little pencil, I was writing these little hymns and illustrating them, and I thought they should be sung in church, but they never were. W. S. Merwin Read Quote
What turned me into an environmentalist, on my eleventh birthday, was seeing the first strip mine. W. S. Merwin Read Quote
Jeffersonian democracy, faulty as it is, and only the fragment of it that we have, is a thing of such preciousness, a thing of such value. W. S. Merwin Read Quote
The Arab world is erupting, which is extraordinary, and to see it happen is like watching rings spreading on a pool – it goes out; it varies so much. The spontaneity is wonderful, but very often, if it’s not well organized, it breaks up, and it peters out. W. S. Merwin Read Quote
The time of wisdom cannot be measured, and for me, wisdom is the garden. There is no time in the garden. W. S. Merwin Read Quote
I think this is one of the benefits of getting older: that one has that perspective on things farther away. One is so caught up in middle years in the idea of accomplishing something when, in fact, the full accomplishment is always with one. W. S. Merwin Read Quote
I think memory is essential to what we are. If we – we wouldn’t be able to talk to each other without memory. And what we think of as the present really is the past. It is made out of the past. W. S. Merwin Read Quote
In a sense, much that is learned is bound to be bad habits. You’re always beginning again. W. S. Merwin Read Quote
What a great poem teaches you – and it’s not intellectual at all – is the resonance in the language that’s heard there. This goes back to the very origins of poetry and to the very origins of language. W. S. Merwin Read Quote
