William Stafford Quotes

Protest poetry
could there be consensus poetry?

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

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

Between roars the lion purrs.

Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.

They say that history is going on somewhere.
They say it won't stop. I have held
One picture still for a long time and waited.

There may be losses too great to understand
That rove after you and
faint and terrible
rip unknown through your hand.

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

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

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

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

The wars we haven't had saved many lives.

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

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

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

Children of heroes have glory for breakfast.

Reluctant hero, drafted again each Fourth
of July, I'll bow and remember you. Who
shall we follow next? Who shall we kill
next time?

There are so many things admirable people do not understand.

Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.

Those who champion democracy, but make a fetish of never accepting anything they don't agree with
what advantage do they see in democracy?

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

If it should happen you wake up and Armageddon has come, lie still.

Evening came, a paw, to the gray hut by the river.

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

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

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

Poverty plus confidence equals
pioneers. We never doubted.

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

You are a memory
too strong to leave this world ...

Save the world by torturing one innocent child? Which innocent child?

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

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.

We think it is calm here, or that our storm is the right size.

I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.

In every town we lived in, there was one great big door ready to open for anyone - the library. And I never met a library I didn't like.

Politicians need citizens who will permit them to behave reasonably.

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

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.

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.

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

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

Which of the horses
we passed yesterday whinnied
all night in my dreams?
I want that one.

If you purify the pond, the lilies die

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

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

If you can say it, it begins to exist.

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

On a sandbar
sunlight stretches out its limbs, or is it
a sycamore, so brazen, so clean and bold?

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.

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

I would exchange all that I have written for the next thing.

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

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.

I'll be me, but I don't like it.

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

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

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

Language can do what it can't say.

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.

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