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James Merrill Quotes
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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
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What we dream up must be lived down, I think.
James Merrill
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Always that same old story—
Father Time and Mother Earth,
a marriage on the rocks.
James Merrill
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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
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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
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As usual in New York, everything is torn down
Before you have had time to care for it.
James Merrill
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Again last night I dreamed the dream called
Laundry.
James Merrill
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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
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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
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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
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Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication.
James Merrill
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But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice.
James Merrill
Quote of the day
No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by popular opinion.
Carrie Chapman Catt
James Merrill
Born:
March 3, 1926
Died:
February 6, 1995
(aged 68)
Bio:
James Ingram Merrill was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Divine Comedies.
Known for:
The Changing Light at Sandover (1982)
A Scattering of Salts (1995)
Collected Poems
A Different Person: A Memoir (1993)
James Merrill on Wikipedia
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