William Stafford Quotes
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The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
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Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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...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.
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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as; second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
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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.
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When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone, and the meaning has to go find an author again.
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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.
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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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?
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The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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And the things you know before you hear them; these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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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.
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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.
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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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.