James Merrill > Quotes

“The day is breaking someone else's heart.”
― James Merrill

“Freedom to be oneself is all very well; the greater freedom is not to be oneself.”
― James Merrill, A Different Person: A Memoir

“Nor do I try to keep a garden, only
An avocado in a glass of water --
Roots pallid, gemmed with air. And later,

When the small gilt leaves have grown
Fleshy and green, I let them die, yes, yes,
And start another. I am earth's no less.”
― James Merrill, Collected Poems

“Let the mind be, along with countless other things, a landing strip for sacred visitations.”
― James Merrill, A Different Person: A Memoir

“The eggshell of appearance split.”
― James Merrill

“Love buries itself in me, up to the hilt.”
― James Merrill, Selected Poems of James Merrill

“The sky is realest: the sky cannot
Be touched and in the mirror it cannot
Be touched. He is enchanted. The rare azur
Is flawless; happily blurred blue is no whit
Less exquisite than blue unblurred. And what
He misses he would never know was there.”
― James Merrill, Collected Poems

“Lost, is it, buried? One more missing piece?

But nothing's lost. Or else: all is translation
And every bit of us is lost in it
(Or found — I wander through the ruin of S
Now and then, wondering at the peacefulness)
And in that loss a self-effacing tree,
Color of context, imperceptibly
Rustling with its angel, turns the waste
To shade and fiber, milk and memory.”
― James Merrill

“Beneath my incredulity
All at once is flowing
Joy, the flash of the unbaited hook --
Yes, yes, it fits, it's right, it had to be!
Intuition weightless and ongoing
Like stanzas in a book
Or golden scales in the melodic brook --”
― James Merrill, Scripts for the Pageant

“Maya departs for city, cat, and lover.
The days grow shorter. Summer's over.

We take long walks among the flying leaves
And ponder turnings taken by our lives.

Look at each other closely, as friends will
On parting. This is not farewell,

Not now. Yet something in the sad
End-of-season light remains unsaid.”
― James Merrill, The Book of Ephraim

“Our little party
Got under way as best it could. The twigs
Unclenched, the greedy rosebuds caked with smut.
The ill-knit creatures, now in hues
Of sunstroke, mulberry, white of clown,
Yellow of bile, bruise-blacks-and-blues,
Stumped outward, waving matchstick arms,
Colliding, poking, hurt, in tears”
― James Merrill, Collected Poems

“A BASIC PRECEPT U WILL NEED TO TAKE ON FAITH: THERE IS NO ACCIDENT”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“Graves claims there were Not seven Titans but fourteen. MY DEAR CAN ONE TRUST POOR RG? A USEFUL HACK BUT HIS WHITE GODDESS? WE REMAIN I FEAR IN A MALE WORLD DESPITE HIS DRUDGERY: SO WISE OF HOMER JUST TO HAVE SAT BACK”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“Dyes made from coal. The tarpits in Los Angeles… ONE OF OUR ANCHOR POINTS A COLONY IN YR DAY STILL A HUB OF POWERFUL ILLUSIONS & SO THE LEGEND OF THE CENTAUR IS THE LAST POETRY OF ATLANTIS Dinosaur, pterodactyl, bat—good Lord!”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“UNHEEDFULL ONE 3 OF YOUR YEARES MORE WE WANT WE MUST HAVE POEMS OF SCIENCE THE WEORK FINISHT IS BUT A PROLOGUE ABSOLUTES ARE NOW NEEDED YOU MUST MAKE GOD OF SCIENCE TELL OF POWER MANS IGNORANCE FEARES THE POWER WE ARE THAT FEAR STOPS PARADISE WE SPEAK FROM WITHIN THE ATOM”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“BUT MAN WANTS IMMORTALITY & NATURE WANTS MANURE.”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“Limp, chill, it shivers in the glow, as when The tenor having braved orchestral fog First sees Brünnhilde sleeping like a log. Laid on the fire, it would hesitate, Trying to think, to feel—then the elate Burst of satori, plucking final sense Boldly from inconclusive evidence.”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“THE FAUST LEGEND IS AN OLD ONE BASED UPON FACT: GOD B SENT 8002 TO POPE INNOCENT VI WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO END A PLAGUE THE POPE MADE A BARGAIN: IMMORTAL LIFE WHICH DISPLEASD GOD BIOLOGY SINCE DEATH IS PRODUCTIVE. INNOCENT GIVEN THE POWER TO BLESS AWAY THE PLAGUE (BY SIMPLY TELLING THEM TO BOIL WATER) HE USED IT. IT BECAME HIS IMMORTALITY THEN AS HE LAY COMPLAINING & DYING HE CURSED ALL BARGAINS WITH”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“But you were everywhere beside me, masked,
As who was not, in laughter, pain, and love.”
― James Merrill, Nights and Days

“WE SAW THE POWER & WITH IT BUILT A GREAT GREAT GLORY A WORLD YOU CD NOT IMAGINE GOD WAS PLEASD IT WAS A SHINING CRUST OVER THE LAND & SEA WE SUSPENDED ALL LIFE IN AN OZONE LAYER WEIGHTLESS & SELFSUSTAINING CHEMICAL GLITTERING & ROOTLESS WHICH THE ATOM BUILT THAT WE FUSED GOD B TURND AGAINST HIS ARCHANGELS THEY HAD SEEN THAT WE WERE ANTIMATTER”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“Free evening, and an hour in which to write My mother—free, half sober, quite alone— Or why not telephone?…”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“A NUMBER FROM OUR ORDERS AR HAD THAT SAME NUMBER POINT ONE THUS YEATS & DJ TSE DOWN ON CERTAIN SUPERSTITIOUS SCRIBES WE HAD TO APPOINT RIMBAUD HE WROTE THE WASTE LAND WE FED IT INTO THE LIKE-CLONED ELIOT And Uncle Ezra? AS IN SHAKESPEARE WE LET THE CASE REST ON A POUND OF FLESH    Thank you, that will do. NO JM FOR THE (M) OUNCE OF FLESH U CAN CLAIM AS YRS LIVES BY THESE FREQUENT CONTACTS WITH YR OWN & OTHERS’ WORK”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“MAN PLAYS A TUNE IN COLORS THE VIBRATIONS OF MUSIC LIGHT UP MACHINES. SIMPLER YET, WRITE ‘AZURE’ & THE LANGUAGE- CONDUCTING BRAIN IS FLOODED WITH A TONE OF SUMMER SKIES. THE PAINTER’S PIGMENTS ARE BLANKLY SEEN THEY CONTAIN NO LIGHT. ARE NOT PAINTINGS BLANK IN A DARK ROOM? & EVEN THE LIVE WHITE LIGHT SHED UPON THEM APPEARS BUT TO DIM THEM FURTHER Vuillard, Piero, Goya, Blake, O’Keeffe, Who lit the mind? It blinks in disbelief.”
― James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover: With the stage adaptation, Voices from Sandover

“Because, once looked at lit
By the cold reflections of the dead
Risen extinct but irresistible,
Our lives have never seemed more full, more real,
Nor the full moon more quick to chill.”
― James Merrill

“Some social highlights: Dead white males in malls.
Prayer breakfasts. Pay-phone sex. "Ring up as meat."
Oprah. The GNP. The contour sheet.
The painless death of History. The stick
Figures on Capitol Hill. Their rhetoric,
Gladly – no, rapturously (on Prozac) suffered!
Gay studies. Right to Lifers. The laugh track.

And clothes. Americans, blithe as the last straw,
Shrug off accountability by dressing
Younger than their kids – jeans, ski-pants, sneakers,
A baseball cap, a happy-face T-shirt . . .
Like first-graders we "love" our mother Earth,
Know she's been sick, and mean to care for her
When we grow up. Seeing my windbreaker,
People hail me with nostalgic awe. (Self-Portrait in TyvekTM Windbreaker)”
― James Merrill, Collected Poems