William Stafford quotes:

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.

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

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.

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.

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.

There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.

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.

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

I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.

Wisdom is having things right in your lifeand knowing why.

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.

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

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

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

Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.

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

They miss the whisper that runsany day in your mind,"Who are you really, wanderer?"--and the answer you have to giveno matter how dark and coldthe world around you is:"Maybe I'm a king.

I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is, why did other people stop?

...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.

A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.

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

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.

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.

A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.

And the things you know before you hear them; these are you and the reason you are in the world.

Ask Me Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made. I will listen to what you say. 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.

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

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

Everyone is born a poet - a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?

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.

I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as "truths" already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job; you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.

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.

I have this feeling of wending my way or plundering through a mysterious jungle of possibilities when I am writing. This jungle has not been explored by previous writers. It never will be explored. It's endlessly varying as we progress through the experience of time. These words that occur to me come out of my relation to the language which is developing even as I am using it.

I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.

If you can say it, it begins to exist.

If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

If you purify the pond, the lilies die

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

It is this impulse to change the quality of experience that I recognize as central to creation. . . . Out of all that could be done, you choose one thing. What that one thing is, nothing else can tell you--you come at it over unmarked snow.

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

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.

Language can do what it can't say.

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

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?

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.

Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.

People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.

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 how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.

Security of character would be like a compass, you know? Other people may say that this way is north, or this way might be north. But the compass just says -- north. That's what we count on.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 ~

There are so many things admirable people do not understand.

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

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

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

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

Writing itself is one of the great, free human activities. There is scope for individuality, and elation, and discovery. In writing, for the person who follows with trust and forgiveness what occurs to him, the world remains always ready and deep, an inexhaustible environment, with the combined vividness of an actuality and flexibility of a dream. Working back and forth between experience and thought, writers have more than space and time can offer. They have the whole unexplored realm of human vision.

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.

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

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

You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about

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 the product is something that happens after you've done it.

You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.