Quote

Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless. - through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose. (No ideas but in things) Invent! Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks.

William Carlos Williams

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William Carlos Williams
Age: 79 †
Born: 1883
Born: September 17
Died: 1963
Died: March 4
Autobiographer
Literary Critic
Physician
Physician Writer
Poet
Writer
Ideas
Slow
Splits
Writing
Stones
Invent
Things
Wait
Sharp
People
Rocks
Strike
Sleepless
Flower
Weed
Compose
Quiet
Quick
Snake
Waiting
Metaphor
Reconcile
Words
Strikes
Snakes

More quotes by William Carlos Williams

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What power has love but forgiveness?
William Carlos Williams
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My surface is myself. Under which to witness, youth is buried. Roots? Everybody has roots.
William Carlos Williams
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[History is] a tyranny over the souls of the dead - and so the imagination of the living.
William Carlos Williams
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A new music is a new mind.
William Carlos Williams
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Everyone in this life is defeated but a man, if he be a man, is not defeated.
William Carlos Williams
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Imagination though it cannot wipe out the sting of remorse can instruct the mind in its proper uses.
William Carlos Williams
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Dissonance / (if you are interested) / leads to discovery.
William Carlos Williams
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Love is that common tone shall raise his fiery head and sound his note.
William Carlos Williams
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Love is a young green willow shimmering at the bare wood's edge
William Carlos Williams
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Each speech having its own character, the poetry it engenders will be peculiar to that speech also in its own intrinsic form. The effect is beauty, what in a single object resolves our complex feelings of propriety.
William Carlos Williams
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Poe gives the sense for the first time in America, that literature is serious, not a matter of courtesy but of truth.
William Carlos Williams
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Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city.
William Carlos Williams
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Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.
William Carlos Williams
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The descent beckons as the ascent beckoned
William Carlos Williams
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I'll write whatever I damn please, whenever I damn please and as I damn please and it'll be good if the authentic spirit of change is on it.
William Carlos Williams
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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.
William Carlos Williams
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The poem springs from the half spoken words of the patient.... When asked, how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing.
William Carlos Williams
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Unless there is a new mind there cannot be a new line, the old will go on repeating itself with recurring deadliness
William Carlos Williams
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We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness.
William Carlos Williams
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Covertly the hands of a great clock go round and round! Were they to move quickly and at once the whole secret would be out and the shuffling of all ants be done forever.
William Carlos Williams