William Stafford Quotes

The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them — those are you, those are why you are in the world.

William Stafford

• World
• Reason
• Knows
• Rich
• Hearing

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Quotes to Explore

• I live in southern Appalachia, so I'm surrounded by people who work very hard for barely a living wage. It's particularly painful that people are working the farms their parents and grandparents worked but aren't living nearly as well.

  

  Barbara Kingsolver
  • People
  • Work
  • Live

• For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn't really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I'm trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

  

  Taylor Swift
  • People
  • Music
  • Thinking

• It's my private life, and it's not up for grabs.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Life
  • Up
  • Private Life

• I made my parents crazy. As a kid, I redecorated my bedroom every month. I would literally save my allowance and go buy things.

  

  Nate Berkus
  • Parents
  • Crazy
  • Month

• As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.

  

  Daniel Dennett
  • Mind
  • Enemy
  • Stupid

• I thought that communism, the tyranny of communism, was an abomination and I beseeched God to bring that terrible evil down and he did. It was a great triumph, it took awhile, but it happened.

  

  Pat Robertson
  • Great
  • God
  • Evil

• Detroit's industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Like
  • Rome
  • Industrial

• I haven't listened to much music lately; I've been out of it.

  

  Adam Jones
  • Music
  • Been
  • Out

• No phone, a movie, a glass of wine, and some salad. Perfect!

  

  Kate Moss
  • Movie
  • Perfect
  • Wine

• Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine.

  

  Edmund Wilson
  • Real
  • Moral
  • Start

• The end of confession is to tell the truth to and for oneself.

  

  J. M. Coetzee
  • Truth
  • End
  • Tell

• Pure geometrical regularity gives a certain pleasure to men troubled by the obscurity of outside appearance. The geometrical line is something absolutely distinct from the messiness, the confusion, and the accidental details of existing things.

  

  T. E. Hulme
  • Men
  • Pleasure
  • Details

• Between now and then and I just felt it was ready and it was a long enough period gone by. I obviously didn't want to hurt anybody, you know. It was done out of a genuine memorial or tribute whatever you want to call it.

  

  Jack Bruce Cream
  • Long
  • Done
  • Hurt

• I'm a firm believer that the world should be your oyster when you're cooking. People should open themselves to other cuisines - there are a lot of hidden secrets all over the world.

  

  Yotam Ottolenghi
  • People
  • World
  • Cooking

• The motivation should come from regulatory enforcement, but enforcement is weak, and environmental litigation is near to impossible. So there's an urgent need for extensive public participation to generate another kind of motivation.

  

  Ma Jun
  • motivation
  • Environmental

• There's no sex in Middle Earth.

  

  Ian Mckellen
  • Earth
  • Sex
  • Middle

• When I feel like my body is exhausted, I focus on making my fifth Olympic team so I can push through it.

  

  Dana Torres
  • Team
  • Focus
  • Body

• You listen to Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio in it, and it's not Black Sabbath. They should have just called it 'Heaven and Hell' right from the beginning. Because you listen to that 'Heaven and Hell' album, that doesn't sound anything close to Black Sabbath.

  

  Zakk Wylde Black Label Society
  • Black
  • Heaven
  • Beginning

• I think there's nothing better in the world than a spirited discussion about the Bible and Jesus and God and the Catholic faith, or the Jewish faith, or the Muslim faith - any religion.

  

  Elizabeth Vargas
  • World
  • God
  • Faith

• A lot of young people don't think they can make a difference. That's really what I am at Dartmouth to do. I'm there to tell the young people, 'Look, a few committed souls can change the world.'

  

  Jim Yong Kim
  • People
  • World

• The world shows up for us, but it doesn't show up for free. We must show up, too, and bring along what knowledge and skills we've cultivated. As with a painting in a gallery, the world has no meaning-no presence to be experienced-apart from our ability to engagement with it.

  

  Alva Noe
  • World
  • Knowledge
  • Skills

• Hope is the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard.

  

  Jennifer Donnelly
  • Hope
  • Emotions
  • Crystal

• If Kate Moss hadn't been booked when she was 14, Kate Moss might not exist.

  

  Carine Roitfeld
  • She
  • Exist
  • Moss

• The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them — those are you, those are why you are in the world.

  

  William Stafford
  • World
  • Reason
  • Knows