James Merrill Quotes

13 quotes in 205 categories

• The day is breaking someone else's heart.
• In life, there are no perfect affections.
• But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice.
• And, as I have said, it's made me think twice about the imagination. If the spirits aren't external, how astonishing the mediums become! Victor Hugo…
• Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication.
• Arthur Young's Reflexive Universe - fascinating but too schematic to fit into my scheme. The most I could hope for was a sense of the…
• The simplest science book is over my head.
• Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays.
• He puts his right hand lightly on the cup, I put my left, leaving the right free to transcribe, and away we go. We get,…
• At college I'd seen my dead frog's limbs twitch under some applied stimulus or other - seen, but hadn't believed. Didn't dream of thinking beyond…
• I'd like to think the scientists need us - but do they? Did Newton need Blake?
• Knowing some Greek helped defuse forbidding words - not that I counted much on using them. You'll find only trace elements of this language in…
• I see those two hearts, I'm afraid, Still. Cool here in the graveyard of good and evil, They are even so to be honored and…

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