William Stafford Quotes

53 quotes in 743 categories

• Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
• I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.
• People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
• A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
• I have a feeling that art is something you do for yourself, and that any time you turn your decisions over to someone else you're…
• A student brings something to discuss, saying, "I don't know whether this is really good, or whether I should throw it in the wastebasket." The…
• A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
• Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
• You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of…
• I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
• The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
• Some people are blinded by their experience. Soldiers know how important war is. Owners of slaves learn every day how inferior subject peoples are.
• Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
• 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.…
• The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
• 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…
• Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch…
• 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…
• Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
• The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying the things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing the…

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