William Stafford (poet) Quotes

32 Sourced Quotes

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.

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

William Stafford
You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.

William Stafford
The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.

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

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

William Stafford
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 things you do not have to hear dulls your hearing. And the things you know before you hear them; these are you and the reason you are in the world.

William Stafford
When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone,
and the meaning has to go find an author again.

William Stafford
You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.

William Stafford
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 postponing at best, your own development. The atmosphere of the workshop should be that of trying out one's own work and accepting the signals from others but not accepting the dictation of others because that is a violation of the spirit of art. Art can't be done by somebody else, it has got to be done by the artist.

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

William Stafford
'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'

William Stafford
One way to find your place is like the rain, a million requests for lodging, one that wins, finds your cheek: you find your home.

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

William Stafford
I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.

William Stafford
Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?

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

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

William Stafford
What you fear will not go away; it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.

William Stafford
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.

William Stafford
The Way It Is There's a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can't get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford
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.

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

William Stafford
Some people are blinded by their experience. Soldiers know how important war is. Owners of slaves learn every day how inferior subject peoples are.

William Stafford
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 assumption is that one or the other choice is the right move. No. Almost everything we say or think or do - or write - comes in that spacious human area bounded by something this side of the sublime and something above the unforgivable.

William Stafford
An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it—I breathed it into my ears.

William Stafford
Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.

William Stafford
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.

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

William Stafford
A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.

William Stafford