We are not born to survive. Only to live.

- W. S. Merwin

Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.

- W. S. Merwin

I needed my mistakes in their order to get me here

- W. S. Merwin

Now all my teachers are dead except silence.

- W. S. Merwin

Obviously a garden is not the wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, it’s appearance, to…

- W. S. Merwin

Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

- W. S. Merwin

Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You've got to stop what you'…

- W. S. Merwin

We are asleep with compasses in our hands.

- W. S. Merwin

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 th…

- W. S. Merwin