Quotes by William Carlos Williams

I tried to put a bird in a cage. O fool that I am! For the bird was Truth. Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage!

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.

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

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.

Afraid lest he be caught up in a net of words, tripped up, bewildered and so defeated-thrown aside-a man hesitates to write down his innermost convictions.

In summer, the song sings itself.

For what we cannot accomplish, what is denied to love, what we have lost in the anticipation a descent follows, endless and indestructible.

What “love” is I don’t know if it’s not the response of our deepest natures to one another.

I pick the hair from her eyes and watch her misery with compassion.

The pure products of America go crazy – mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves.