108 Quotes by W. S. Merwin

My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.

we travel far and fast and as we pass through we forget where we have been

I will take with me the emptiness of my hands. What you do not have you find everywhere

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

I'm very pessimistic about the future of the human species. We have been so indifferent to life on the whole that it will take its toll. It's not just the polar bears that are having a hard time; what we're doing is gradually impoverishing and poisoning the whole of the rest of life.

There is part of a structure in which every species is related to every other species. And they're built up on species, like a pyramid. The simpler cell organisms, and then the more complicated ones, all the way up to the mammals and birds and so forth. We call it 'developing upward'... The whole thing depends on every part of it. And we're taking out the stones from the pyramid.

So this is what I am Pondering his eyes that could not Conceive that I was a creature to run from I who have always believed too much in words

We are the echo of the future.

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires will wave to me