Quotes from William Carlos Williams

If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.

That which is possible is inevitable.

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.

so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

beauty' is related not to 'loveliness' but to a state in which reality plays a part.

My surface is myself. Under which to witness, youth is buried. Roots? Everybody has roots.

A poem is this:/A nuance of sound/delicately operating/upon a cataract of sense/...the particulars/of a song waking/upon a bed of sound.

THE THOUGHTFUL LOVER Deny yourself all half things. Have it or leave it. But it will keep—or it is not worth the having. Never start anything you can't finish— However do not lose faith because you are starved! She loves you she says. Believe it —tomorrow. But today the particulars of poetry that difficult art require your whole attention.

All women are not Helen, I know that, but have Helen in their hearts.

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.

The descent beckons as the ascent beckoned

I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the poet is.

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.

If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,-- Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?

History, history! We fools, what do we know or care.

History must stay open, it is all humanity.

all to no end save beauty the eternal-- So in detail they, the crowd, are beautiful

As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.

There is nothing beginning nor end to the imagination but it delights in its own seasons reversing the usual order at will.

[History is] a tyranny over the souls of the dead - and so the imagination of the living.

To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force the imagination.

The only realism in art is of the imagination.

The instant trivial as it is is all we have unless-unless things the imagination feeds upon, the scent of the rose, startle us anew.

It was the love of love, the love of swallows up all else, a grateful love, a love of natural, of people, of animals, a love ingengering gentleness and goodness that moved meand that I saw in you