The very best of all Merwin: I have been reading William since 1952, and always with joy.

Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.

The most beautiful prose paragraph yet written by any American.

We read, frequently if not unknowingly, in search of a mind more original than our own.

I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike

It is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary.

Shakespeare is the true multicultural author. He exists in all languages. He is put on the stage everywhere. Everyone feels that they are represented by him on the stage.

At our present bad moment, we need above all to recover our sense of literary individuality and of poetic autonomy.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

Reading well is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.

The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers.

Love is not a landmine but a sinkhole.

The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

I might be stupid to think love is love, but I do.

Coffee, whiskey, and fishing poles. That’s really all you need in life.

The astral dimensions afford you opportunities to have experiences and gain insights into the structural nature of how dimensions are made up and phased together.

The first step to be taken by everyone who wishes to act morally is to decide not to act according to the general customs and doings of his fellow-men.

I can start the rain. Bring thunder. Bring lightning. Want to see?

The Republican establishment, the mainstream corporate financial wealth, is getting to a point where it can't control the base it's mobilized.

I can sit and dissect for hours, and then write 50 songs about. I always find that inspiring.

We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong.