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We are not born to survive. Only to live.

W. S. Merwin

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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
Live
Life
Survive
Born

More quotes by W. S. Merwin

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Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca.
W. S. Merwin
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Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never forget them. We need them. Like the back of the picture.
W. S. Merwin
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I say to my breath once again, little breath come from in front of me, go away behind me, row me quietly now, as far as you can, for I am an abyss that I am trying to cross.
W. S. Merwin
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The story of each stone leads back to a mountain.
W. S. Merwin
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We are asleep with compasses in our hands.
W. S. Merwin
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Laughter was the shape the darkness took around the first appearance of the light.
W. S. Merwin
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I wouldn't be happy about being considered a love poet or an environmental - I don't want any of those tags.
W. S. Merwin
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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
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come back believer in shade believer in silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain
W. S. Merwin
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You grieve Not that heaven does not exist but That it exists without us
W. S. Merwin
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I offer you what I have my Poverty
W. S. Merwin
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I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can't you can't you can never be sure you die without knowing whether anything you wrote was any good if you have to be sure don't write
W. S. Merwin
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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
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Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.
W. S. Merwin
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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
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We're losing a species every few seconds. We cannot put them back. If we change our mind and say, 'Oops, we made a mistake' - it's too late. This is the world we live with.
W. S. Merwin
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If you can't bear what's happening to the natural world, if you can't bear the way we treat each other if you can't bear wars, you just can't bear the whole idea of war, which is possibly unavoidable. But still, you resist it. Because you just hate our treating each other that way and causing that suffering.
W. S. Merwin
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My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.
W. S. Merwin
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Now all my teachers are dead except silence.
W. S. Merwin
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I will take with me the emptiness of my hands. What you do not have you find everywhere
W. S. Merwin