Miller Williams Quotes & Sayings

I put myself in a spiritual and physical place where I've learned from experience the synapses are likely to fire and the juices are likely to flow, and simply begin to write. — Miller Williams

Time
goes
too
fast.
Come
home. — Miller Williams

I manage a toast to the Christmas tree
and one to the sweet absurdity
in the miracle of the verb to be.
Lucky you, lucky me. — Miller Williams

Wherever it left us,
we were barely learning to live with it
when here came Flannery O'Connor and Hank Williams
to tell us that no one has ever been loved
the way everybody wants to be loved,
and that's hard. That's hard.
last stanza of How Step by Step We Have Come to Understand — Miller Williams

Every word you add dilutes the sentence. — Miller Williams

Ritual is important to us as human beings. It ties us to our traditions and our histories. — Miller Williams

I respond to mood. I hear some phrase, or pick up a rhythm. — Miller Williams

Jazz is very important. It's not something I can put my finger on. When I'm writing at my favorite time, I like to have the gentle side of Coltrane or Brubeck on the CD player. It creates sort of a spiritual space in which I write best. — Miller Williams

I like to think that the best poetry is or involves a contest between ordinary conversation and ritual. — Miller Williams

Too many poets write poems which are only difficult on the surface, difficult because the dramatic situation is easily misunderstood. It's not difficult to write poems that are misunderstood. A drunk, a three-year-old-they are easily misunderstood. What is difficult is being clear and mysterious at the same time. The dramatic situation needs to be as clear in a poem as it is in a piece of good journalism. The why is part of the mystery, but the who, what, where, and when should all be understood. — Miller Williams

For something to be useful to the spirit is not very valuable to get your covered wagon across the desert. We have adopted that attitude so thoroughly that any American father whose son tells him he wants to write poetry will be embarrassed. — Miller Williams

Separatio in Loco
He lives all alone now, in the home they bought,
and finally seems to be managing, more or less.
Not the way he was, of course, with her,
who lives alone now, too, at the same address. — Miller Williams

A thing may fail as a poem because it tries to do what a poem cannot do: it tries to become a treatise on cosmic truth ... We can best be exact about the cosmic things - God and truth, beauty, eternity and love - by not talking directly about them. — Miller Williams

I don't like poetry that doesn't give me a sense of ritual, but I don't like poetry that doesn't sound like people talking to each other. I try to do both at once. — Miller Williams

Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone. — Miller Williams

I always have pen and paper with me. — Miller Williams