William Stafford Quotes - Page 2

Language can do what it can’t say.

The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.

It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well, bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one stirring, no plans. Just being there.

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?

You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.

I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.

Keep a journal, and don't assume that your work has to accomplish anything worthy: artists and peace-workers are in it for the long haul, and not to be judged by immediate results.

What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.

If you can say it, it begins to exist.

The earth says have a place, be what that place requires; hear the sound the birds imply and see as deep as ridges go behind each other.

My question is "when did other people give up the idea of being a poet?" You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?

A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.

The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.

Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.

It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.

The more you let yourself be distracted from where you are going, the more you are the person that you are. It's not so much like getting lost as it is like getting found.

They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, "Who are you really, wanderer?"-- and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: "Maybe I'm a king.

The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.

When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.

Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.

All still when summer is over stand shocks in the field, nothing left to whisper, not even good-bye, to the wind. After summer was over we knew winter would come: we knew silence would wait, tall, patient calm.

When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.

So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as; second it legends itself deep, the way it is.

A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.