James Merrill Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

I yearned for the kind of unseasoned telling found In legends, fairy tales, a tone licked clean Over the centuries by mild old tongues, Grandam to cub, serene, anonymous.

James Merrill
What we dream up must be lived down, I think.

James Merrill
Always that same old story—
Father Time and Mother Earth,
a marriage on the rocks.

James Merrill
Proust's Law (are you listening?) is twofold: (a) What least thing our self-love longs for most Others instinctively withhold; (b) Only when time has slain desire Is his wish granted to a smiling ghost Neither harmed nor warmed, now, by the fire.

James Merrill
HE PREFERS
LIVE MUSIC TO A PATRON'S HUMDRUM SPHERES
Is this permitted? When you are Mozart yes He's living now? As what? A black rock star whatever THAT is.

James Merrill
As usual in New York, everything is torn down
Before you have had time to care for it.

James Merrill
Again last night I dreamed the dream called
Laundry.

James Merrill
Each thirteenth year he married. When he died
There were already several chilled wives
In sable orbit—rings, cars, permanent waves.
We'd felt him warming up for a green bride.
He could afford it. He was 'in his prime'
And three score ten. But money was not time.

James Merrill
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 vocabulary and some possible images.

James Merrill
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 or around what I saw.

James Merrill
Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication.

James Merrill
But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice.

James Merrill