For two decades, I’ve maintained a list of quotes I like by poets, writers, and thinkers I find interesting. This post is part of that series. All posts in the series are organized alphabetically. Some poets and writers have their own dedicated pages.

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‎I am increasingly in love with the idea of love flowing from each of us according to our abilities, and to each of us according to our needs. — Colleen Wainwright

People love to make a great noise about the importance of hewing to your path. There is a fair amount of literature out there on the noble struggle involved. But rarely do we get into the gruesome details of how doing your own thing will make you feel on a day-to-day basis. Like crazy, for starters. — Colleen Wainwright

… when [Jim] Wilson slows people down, it gives you a chance to watch them moving through space. — Tom Waits

As boys / we knew the difference / between light and dark / We gutted light / skinned it / left the guts at the edge / of the woods — Michael Wasson

Some crumpled carton of cigarettes / a bottle of black death in your hand. / Hold onto me like that. / Like you want to get drunk, stare at the sky — Michael Wasson

Our dreams are an absence / of fire. They take us / all the way to heaven, / by a curious path. / They take us / all the way to hell. — Jeff Weddle

Falling in love is a desolating experience, but not when it is with a countryside. — T. H. White

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. ― Elie Wiesel

Our kinship with Earth must be maintained; otherwise, we will find ourselves trapped in the center of our own paved-over souls with no way out. ― Terry Tempest Williams

as each of us wants the other / watching at the end, / as both want not to leave the other alone, / as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone, / we gaze across breakfast and pretend. — Miller Williams

At our age the imagination / across the sorry facts / lifts us / to make roses / stand before thorns. — William Carlos Williams

The body is a formal constraint. It has this one life with which to make eternity. — Elizabeth Willis

Our kinship with Earth must be maintained; otherwise, we will find ourselves trapped in the center of our own paved-over souls with no way out. ― Terry Tempest Williams

Turns out soil is a good audience. — Ella Wilson

Craziness in the air seldom comes / to such barren places. — Thomas Zvi Wilson

Everyone waits for mud to freeze, for cold / that tears flesh like teeth do, the sky / darkened as if by shame and on the ground / the white sheet of surrender. — Thomas Zvi Wilson

“Some buildings loiter, loiter — / and that is why I have seen suddenly everyone is a rat.” Craziness in the air seldom comes / to such barren places. — Thomas Zvi Wilson

The river quickly divides what spoils / then eats away at last / the last of everything that was — Thomas Zvi Wilson

Watch over me. / Night is here / and I am naked. — Thomas Zvi Wilson

Construct an instrument, or find something, or use an instrument as part of a construction which can make 5 different pitches, or 11 or 3 different pitches; 6 different qualities of sound (they can be made to depend on the manner of performance), or 2; and which can sustain sounds at least somewhat before they begin to fade. — Christian Wolff

I like to come and go through different doors more than I like to throw my weight against the same one every time only to discover it was never locked; and I like to change the locks once in a while too; but it isn’t just about keeping it interesting for the Author or Dear Reader; it is about how differently things actually are if you come and go by different portals. — C.D. Wright

Actually, nights are hard for everybody because it’s dark. — Charles Wright

There it stood again: / wood’s edge, and depression’s / deepening / shade inviting me in / saying / no one is here. / No one was there / to be ashamed of me. — Franz Wright

The cowbells follow one another / Into the distances of the afternoon. — James Wright

Keep the wars on opposite shores, / spare us from wandering, hungry soldiers / cut loose from all that keeps a man / from doing his worst. — Mark Wunderlich