43 Quotes by William Empson

The "News," the conferences that leer, the creeping fog, the civil traps. These are what force you into fear.

It is the pain, it is the pain, endures.

It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

. . . the waste even in a fortunate life, the isolation of a life rich in intimacy, cannot but be felt deeply, and is the central feeling of tragedy. And anything of value must accept this because it must not prostitute itself; its strength is to be prepared to waste itself, if it does not get the opportunity.

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.It is not the effort nor the failure tires.The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

Poets, on the face of it, have either got to be easier or to write their own notes; readers have either got to take more trouble over reading or cease to regard notes as pretentious and a sign of bad poetry

Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end. What is there to be or do? What's become of me or you? Are we kind or are we true? Sitting two and two, boys, waiting for the end.

The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.

Poetry contains nothing haphazard.