William Stafford Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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I love boxing. I box in a local boxing gym in London. I usually spar. But I've done two fights and I lost both of them admirably. I didn't realize how much it would hurt for them to actually hit me.
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Writing is like a contact sport, like football. You can get hurt, but you enjoy it.
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When you say 'control freak' and 'OCD' and 'organized,' that suggests someone who's cold in nature, and I'm just not. Like, I'm really open when it comes to letting people in. But I just like my house to be neat, and I don't like to make big messes that would hurt people.
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I like trying different foods. I've done vegetarian stuff, and I've gone through meat phases, and then I do no bread, and then I eat bread. I'm really all over the place in the way a lot of actors are.
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I've never been married and I've no more desire to be married now than I ever have. I hate bureaucracy and I am not religious.
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People in Sweden talk a lot about the weather - how much we hate it. But Finns get more depressed.
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The point - the power to hurt - of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.
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When I was 28, I made this film called 'Drinking Buddies' that I starred in and produced, and we improvised the entire thing, and it was a complete exercise in freedom of expression in making something for only the purpose of making it, not for recognition or money or anything else, and it's still my favorite thing I've ever done.
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I don't read horror, ever. When I was 15, I made the mistake of reading part of 'The Exorcist.' It was the first and last horror book I've ever opened.
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Having a lot of people suddenly depending on me to get the job done was a marvelous motivator. The book and movie deals seemed to flip a switch in my head, and off I went.
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Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.
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The search for a Jewish national home came about due to centuries of anti-Semitic pogroms, expulsions, discrimination and hate. The Holocaust was simply the evil culmination of all that came before it.
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That's the big mistake the environmental movement made - 'We'll scare the hell out of you, and you'll become an activist'.
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Personally, coming out was one of the most important things I've ever done, lifting from my shoulders the millstone of lies that I hadn't even realized I was carrying.
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Irvin Kershner, no matter what anyone says, has done some great work. 'Eyes of Laura Mars' is an incredible movie.
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I'd hate to be a songwriter starting a career today.
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I molded myself against le Front National. Against hate speech, be it racist, sexist, xenophobic, or homophobic. Against the kind of injustice I faced during my own life.
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Everything in the world we want to do or get done, we must do with and through people.
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If we can forgive what's been done to us... If we can forgive what we've done to others... If we can leave our stories behind. Our being victims and villains. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.
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I should have been braver myself, shown you it's okay to get hurt along the way.
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I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.
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Propaganda must appeal to mankind's better judgment and to the necessary belief in a better future. For this belief, the valley of the shadow of death is but a war station on the road to the blessed summit.
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There's something incredibly primal about facing something treacherous but doing it anyway.
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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.
