I can't imagine ever writing anything of any kind on a machine. I never tried to write either poetry or prose on a typewriter. I like to do it on useless paper, scrap paper, because it's of no importance.
W. S. MerwinRead
As a child, I used to have a secret dread - and a recurring nightmare - of the whole world becoming city, being covered with cement and buildings and streets. No more country. No more woods.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a fear of losing natural landscapes to urbanization.
W. S. Merwin expresses a childhood fear of a world entirely consumed by urban development, suggesting a deep appreciation for nature and the countryside. The recurring nightmare signifies an anxiety about environmental loss that resonates with concerns over modern issues of urban sprawl and the diminishing natural world.
Themes
NatureUrbanizationEnvironmentChildhoodFear
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about environmental conservation.
More from W. S. Merwin
All quotes →I think there's a kind of desperate hope built into poetry that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there's still time.
W. S. MerwinRead
The kind of writing that matters most to me is something you don't learn about. It's constantly coming out of what I don't know rather than what I do know.
W. S. MerwinRead
I say to my breath once again, little breath come from in front of me, go away behind me, row me quietly now, as far as you can, for I am an abyss that I am trying to cross.
W. S. MerwinRead
Through all of youth I was looking for you_x000D_ without knowing what I was looking for_x000D_ part memory part distance remaining _x000D_ mine in the ways that I learn to miss you_x000D_ from what we cannot hold the stars are made.
W. S. MerwinRead
What I really believe is the only hopeful relation between our life and the whole of life is one of reverence and respect and of feeling at one with it. The other attitude which is the one our society is based on is devastating and it is killing the earth and it is killing us too.
W. S. MerwinRead
Similar quotes
Conservation means development as much as it does protection._x000D_ _x000D_ A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.
Theodore RooseveltRead
These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.
John MuirRead
The sweet small clumsy feet of april came into the ragged meadow of my soul.
E. E. CummingsRead
I'm not over-fond of animals. I am merely astounded by them.
David AttenboroughRead
Despite all I have seen and experiences, I still get the same thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb toward it.
Edmund HillaryRead
They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and- leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.
Cormac MccarthyRead