Skip to content

William Carlos Williams Quotes

1883–1963 United States

William Carlos Williams (17 September 1883 – 4 March 1963) was an American poet and physician.

United States
Physicians
Poets

Also known as: Williams, William Carlos

Random William Carlos Williams quote

62 quotes

My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men…

Many questions haven't been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past.

The storm bursts
or fades! it is not
the end of the world.

The whole world
became my garden!
But the sea
which no one tends
is also a garden
when the sun strikes it
and the waves
are wakened.

It's a strange world made up of disappointments for the most part.

It isn’t what he says that counts as a work of art, it’s what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity.

The Wedge (1944)

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches —
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter.

Spring and All (1923)

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

Detail & Prosody for the Poem Patterson given to James Laughlin (1939)

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

Marriage (1916)

Why do we live? Most of us need the very thing we never ask for.

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

Al Que Quiere! (1917)

I liked this because of the elimination of the essential in the composition. I cut it down and down, and down. This squeezed up to make it vivid.

It is difficult
to get the news from poems

Journey to Love (1955)

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.

The Wedge (1944)

It is dreams that have destroyed us.

Al Que Quiere! (1917)

The War is the first and only thing in the world today.
The arts generally are not, nor is this writing a diversion from that for relief, a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field.

The Wedge (1944)

Endless wealth,
I thought,
held out its arms to me.

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast — a cold wind.

Spring and All (1923)

He's come out of the man
and he's let
the man go —

Collected Poems 1921-1931 (1934)

There's a lot of bastards out there!

Remark (1957)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: William Carlos Williams (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.