W. S. Merwin Quotes
When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.

Quotes to Explore
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To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith.
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I devoted my career to building an affinity with my fans who have supported me unflinchingly and no barbed wire fence or prison wall will stop that.
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I think it's more important than ever to be as vocal as I can be about things I believe in outside of music.
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The most significant barrier to female leadership is the actual lack of females in leadership. The best advice I can give to women is to go out and start something, ideally their own businesses. If you can't see a path for leadership within your own company, go blaze a trail of your own.
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I live on the same street as my family, actually. I live across the road. I'm a real family person!
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I always say three things make a writer: inspiration, obviously; perspiration, doing the work. But the third is desperation. I'm not really fit for anything else, or to have a real job. That fear drives me. The pressure has always been self inflicted.
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I believe journalism or news will migrate to the online medium.
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So I moved to Europe and only came back when directors like Robert Altman would call me after they'd seen my work in Full Metal Jacket.
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Luck can be assisted. It is not all chance with the wise.
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I love bass, I really do. Bass is ace!
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The list of my favorite experiences would almost equal the list of plays I've been in. There are a few exceptions, but out of politeness I'm not going to mention them. If you don't have a few stinkers, you can't appreciate the good ones.
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Sex is a bad thing because it rumples the clothes.
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The river is constantly turning and bending and you never know where it's going to go and where you'll wind up. Following the bend in the river and staying on your own path means that you are on the right track. Don't let anyone deter you from that.
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The only thing documentary filmmakers have to work with, at least the way I make films, is trust. That's been true of everyone from James Carville and George Stephanopoulos to the kids in 'American High' to the soldiers in 'Military Diaries' to Anna Wintour to Dick Cheney.
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'Curvy' is just a polite way of saying 'fat.'
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I'm such a boots-jeans-tops-blazer girl.
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I love music.
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For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.
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Opening up Atlantic and Arctic waters to drilling would lock the next generation into burning oil and gas in a way that only makes climate change that much worse, fueling ever rising seas, widening deserts, withering drought, blistering heat, raging storms, wildfires, floods and other hallmarks of climate chaos.
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There is a loving way with words and an unloving way. And it is only with the loving way that the simplicity of language becomes beautiful.
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The brutal reality about aging is that it has only an accelerator pedal. We have yet to discover whether a brake exists for people.
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I did my doctoral dissertation on the lectionary readings that we use at mass and how you have biblical texts that have been taken out of their original Bible context and put together for mass, and now they form a new text. Out of that new text, there is an interplay of new meaning.
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I know I began as a passion and have ended as a habit, like all husbands.
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When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.