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1 " I manage a toast to the Christmas treeand one to the sweet absurdityin the miracle of the verb to be.Lucky you, lucky me. "
― Miller Williams
2 " Every word you add dilutes the sentence. "
3 " 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.- Separatio in Loco "
― Miller Williams , Time and the Tilting Earth
4 " Timegoestoofast.Comehome. "
5 " 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. "
6 " Wherever it left us, we were barely learning to live with itwhen here came Flannery O'Connor and Hank Williamsto tell us that no one has ever been lovedthe 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 "
7 " The day you took the testI would have told you this:that you had no time to listen to questionshunting out the answers in your filesis surely the kind of irony that poems are made of "
― Miller Williams ,
8 " Have compassion for everyone you meet, even when 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. "
9 " We have memorized America,how it was born and who we have been and where.In ceremonies and silence we say the words,telling the stories, singing the old songs.We like the places they take us. Mostly we do. "
― Miller Williams , Some Jazz a While: COLLECTED POEMS
10 " Who were many people coming togethercannot become one people falling apart.Who dreamed for every child an even chancecannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.Whose law was never so much of the hand as the headcannot let chaos make its way to the heart.Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to childcannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.We know what we have done and what we have said,and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—just and compassionate, equal, able, and free. "
