William Williams Quotes (44 Quotes)

Nothing whips my blood like verse.

There is something something urgent I have to say to you and you alone but it must wait while I drink in the joy of your approach, perhaps for the last time.

With what deep thirstwe quicken our desiresto that rank odor of a passing springtime

This is where the difficulty lies. We are lucky when that underground current can be tapped and the secret spring of all our lives will send up its pure water. It seldom happens. A thousand trivialities push themselves to the front, our lying habits of ev

The poem, to me (until I go broke) is an attempt, an experiment, a failing experiment, toward assertion with broken means but an assertion, always, of a new and total culture, the lifting of an environment to expression. Thus it is social, the poem is a social instrument.

I have had my dream -- like others --and it has come to nothing, so thatI remain now carelesslywith feet planted on the groundand look up at the sky.

Some leaves hang late, some fallbefore the first frost--so goesthe tale of winter branches and old bones.

History must stay open, it is all humanity.

In the imagination, we are from henceforth (so long as you read) locked in a fraternal embrace, the classic caress of author and reader.

I am lonely, lonely.I was born to be lonely,I am best so

The only human value of anything, writing included, is intense vision of the facts.

I cannot say that I have gone to hell for your love but often found myself there in your pursuit

I wanted to write a poemthat you would understand.For what good is it to meif you can't understand it

Empty pockets make empty heads.

The business of love iscruelty which,by our wills,we transformto live together.

If they give you lined paper, write the other way.

Thus having prepared their budsagainst a sure winterthe wise treesstand sleeping in the cold.

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

There is neither beginning nor end to the imagination but it delights in its own seasons reversing the usual order at will.

Forget all rules, forget all restrictions, as to taste, as to what ought to be said, write for the pleasure of it -- whether slowly or fast -- every form of resistance to a complete release should be abandoned.

Here it is spring againand I still a young manI am late at my singing.

Night is a room darkened for lovers. . . .

We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness.

When I was youngerit was plain to meI must make something of myself.Older nowI walk back streetsadmiring the housesof the very poor. . . .

But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writing is always one the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets

It was the love of love, the love that swallows up all else, a grateful love, a love of nature, of people, of animals, a love engendering gentleness and goodness that moved me and that I saw in you.

We lived long together a life filled, if you will, with flowers. So that I was cheered when I came first to know that there were flowers also in hell.

History, history We fools, what do we know or care History begins for us with murder and enslavement, not with discovery.

Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am,by what devious means do you contriveto remain idle Teach me, O master.

I will teach you my townspeoplehow to perform a funeralfor you have it over a troopof artists--unless one should scour the world--you have the ground sense necessary.

Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels.

I have discovered that most ofthe beauties of travel are due tothe strange hours we keep to see them. . . .

The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost.

At ten a.m. the young housewifemoves about in negligee behindthe wooden walls of her husband's house.I pass solitary in my car.

Antony and Cleopatrawere rightthey have shownthe way. I love youor I do not liveat all.

It is summer, it is the solsticethe crowd ischeering, the crowd is laughingin detailpermanently, seriouslywithout thought.

Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household

SleepThere is hunting in heaven --Sleep safe till tomorrow.

Time is a storm in which we are all lost. Only inside the convolutions of the storm itself shall we find our directions.

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.

I feel the caress of my own fingerson my own neck as I place my collarand think pityinglyof the kind women I have known.

Life is valuable -- when completed by the imagination. And then only.

My surface is myself.Under whichto witness, youth isburied. RootsEverybody has roots.

But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective. It doesn't declaim or explain, it presents.