William Carlos Williams

"To tell the truth, I myself never quite feel that I know what I am talking about — if I did, and when I do, the thing written seems nothing to me. However, what I do write and allow to survive I always feel is worth while and that nobody else has ever come as near as I have to the thing I have intimated if not expressed. To me its a matter of first understanding that which may not be put to words. I might add more but to no purpose. In a sense, I must express myself, youre right, but always completely incomplete if that means anything."

"It is in tune with the tempo of life — scattered yet welded into the whole, — broken, yet woven together."

"Theres a lot of bastards out there!"

"So different, this man And this woman: A stream flowing In a field."

"My first poem was a bolt from the blue … it broke a spell of disillusion and suicidal despondence. … it filled me with soul satisfying joy."

"Lift your flowers on bitter stems chickory! Lift them up out of the scorched ground! Bear no foliage but give yourself wholly to that! Strain under them you bitter stems that no beast eats — and scorn greyness!"

"The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic."

"Why do we live? Most of us need the very thing we never ask for. We talk about revolution as if it was peanuts. What we need is some frank thinking and a few revolutions in our own guts; to hell with what most of the sons of bitches that I know and myself along with them if I dont take hold of myself and turn about when I need to — or go ahead further if thats the game."

"Why do I write today?The beauty of the terrible faces of our nonentities stirs me to it: colored women day workers— old and experienced— returning home at dusk, in cast off clothing faces like old Florentine oak."

"I lie here thinking of you:—the stain of love is upon the world!"

"The pure products of America go crazy —"

"Poetry demands a different material than prose. It uses another facet of the same fact … the spontaneous conformation of language as it is heard."