Quote

Through all of youth I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for

W. S. Merwin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

W. S. Merwin
Age: 91 †
Born: 1927
Born: September 30
Died: 2019
Died: March 15
Poet
Translator
Writer
New York City
New York
William Stanley Merwin
Looking
Without
Youth
Knowing

More quotes by W. S. Merwin

Image
Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars It is my emptiness among them While they drift farther away in the invisible morning
W. S. Merwin
Image
My cradle was a shoe.
W. S. Merwin
Image
On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree
W. S. Merwin
Image
This is what I have heard at last the wind in December lashing the old trees with rain unseen rain racing along the tiles under the moon wind rising and falling wind with many clouds trees in the night wind.
W. S. Merwin
Image
From what we cannot hold the stars are made.
W. S. Merwin
Image
Your absence has gone through me
W. S. Merwin
Image
we travel far and fast and as we pass through we forget where we have been
W. S. Merwin
Image
Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.
W. S. Merwin
Image
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.
W. S. Merwin
Image
My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.
W. S. Merwin
Image
I have with me all that I do not knowI have lost none of it.
W. S. Merwin
Image
Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You've got to stop what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what you're expecting and just be there for the poem for however long it takes.
W. S. Merwin
Image
When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.
W. S. Merwin
Image
I needed my mistakes in their order to get me here
W. S. Merwin
Image
What you remember saves you.
W. S. Merwin
Image
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.
W. S. Merwin
Image
Laughter was the shape the darkness took around the first appearance of the light.
W. S. Merwin
Image
Send me out into another life lord because this one is growing faint I do not think it goes all the way
W. S. Merwin
Image
I will take with me the emptiness of my hands. What you do not have you find everywhere
W. S. Merwin
Image
come back believer in shade believer in silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain
W. S. Merwin