“I prefer not to starve, to live by the practice of medicine, which combines the best features of both science and philosophy with that imponderable and enlightening element, disease, unknown in its normality to either. But, like Pasteur, when he was young, or anyone else who has something to do, I wish I had more money for my literary experiments.”William Carlos Williams, c. 1931”

“Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and images… It is not a conscious recording of the day’s experiences ‘freshly and with the appearance of reality’… The writer of imagination would find himself released from observing things for the purpose of writing them down later. He would be there to enjoy, to taste, to engage the free world, not a world which he carries like a bag of food, always fearful lest he drop something or someone get more than he.”

“Danse Russe If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,-- Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?”

“I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.”

“The Last Words of My English GrandmotherThere were some dirty platesand a glass of milkbeside her on a small tablenear the rank, disheveled bed--Wrinkled and nearly blindshe lay and snoredrousing with anger in her tonesto cry for food,Gimme something to eat--They're starving me--I'm all right--I won't goto the hospital. No, no, noGive me something to eat!Let me take youto the hospital, I saidand after you are wellyou can do as you please.She smiled, Yesyou do what you please firstthen I can do what I please--Oh, oh, oh! she criedas the ambulance men liftedher to the stretcher--Is this what you callmaking me comfortable?By now her mind was clear--Oh you think you're smartyou young people,she said, but I'll tell youyou don't know anything.Then we started.On the waywe passed a long rowof elms. She looked at themawhile out ofthe ambulance window and said,What are all thosefuzzy looking things out there?Trees? Well, I'm tiredof them and rolled her head away.”

“You remember I had a strong inclination all my life to be a painter. Under different circumstances I would rather have been a painter than to bother with these god-damn words. I never actually thought of myself as a poet but I knew I had to be an artist in some way.”

“I think these days when there is so little to believe in——when the old loyalties——God, country, and the hope of Heaven——aren't very real, we are more dependent than we should be on our friends. The only thing left to believe in——someone who seems beautiful.”