William Stafford Quotes (51 Quotes)

When I dream at night, they save a place for me,no matter how small, somewhere by the fire.

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.

Even the upper end of the riverbelieves in the ocean.

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.

These words that occur to me come out of my relation to the language which is developing even as I am using it.

. . . You were aimed from birthyou will never be alone. Rainwill come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,long aisles -- you never heard so deep a sound,moss on rock, and years. You turn your head --that's what the silence meant you're not alone. The whole wide world pours down.

They tell how it was, and how time came along, and how it happened again and again. They tell the slant life takes when it turns and slashes your face as a friend.

And all the time it's your own story, even when you think -- It's all just made up, a trick. What is the author trying to do Reader, we are in such a story all of this is trying to arrange a kind of prayer for you. Pray for me.

It is time for all the heroes to go homeif they have any, time for all of us common onesto locate ourselves by the real thingswe live by.

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

If you don't know the kind of person I amand I don't know the kind of person you area pattern that others made may prevail in the worldand following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all crueltyto know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

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

For it is important that awake people be awake,or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleepthe signals we give -- yes or no, or maybe --should be clear the darkness around us is deep.

The world speaks everything to us.It is our only friend.

You can't tell when strange things with meaningwill happen. I'm still here writing it downjust the way it was. You don't have toprove anything, my mother said. Just be readyfor what God sends.

Wisdom is having things right in your lifeand knowing why.

I think language does bring us together. Fragile and misleading as it is, it's the best communication we've got, and poetry is language at its most intense and potentially fulfilling. Poems do bring people together.

It's love, they say. You touchthe right one and a whole half of the universewakes up, a new half.

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

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

Notice what this poem is not doing.

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

You and I can turn and lookat the silent river and wait. We knowthe current is there, hidden and thereare comings and goings from miles awaythat hold the stillness exactly before us.What the river says, that is what I say.

Next time what I'd do is look atthe earth before saying anything. I'd stopjust before going into a houseand be an emperor for a minuteand listen better to the windor to the air being still.

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

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.

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.

Well, it was yesterday. And the sun came,WhyIt came.

What can anyone give you greater than now,starting here, right in this room, when you turn around

We are led one thing at a time to that pure gain -- all that we lose.

Shelter in winter that day --a storm coming, but in the leeof an island in a cover with friends --oh, little bright cup of sun.

Exactly at midnight yesterday sighs away.

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

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

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. That is, he does not draw on a reservoir instead, he engages in an activity that brings to him a whole succession of unforeseen stories, poems, essays, plays, laws, philosophies, religions . . .

Been on probation most of my life.

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

Some time when the river is ice ask memistakes I have made. Ask me whetherwhat I have done is my life. Othershave come in their slow way intomy thought, and some have tried to helpor to hurt ask me what differencetheir strongest love or hate has made.

I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.

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.

Silence on a hill where the path endedand then the forest belowmoving in one long whisperas evening touched the leaves.

All right. I listen. My life sinks a littlefarther, for the pity from now on I know itwith them. We'll take a stand, wherever the end is.We go forward by this quiet sharing,they one way, I another. I am their promiseno one else is going to know.

That's the world, and we all live there.

A great snug wall goes around everything,has always been there, will alwaysremain. It is a good world to belost in. It comforts you. It isall right. And you sleep.

My name is William Tell when little oppressions touch me arrows hidden in my cloak whisper, Ready, ready.

You happy beings, watch every face for thoseyou pass caught in the midst of lifeby some horror, their souls gone dim, cursedor unlucky, exiled under a stone.

At noon in the desert a panting lizard waited for history, its elbows tense, watching the curve of a particular road as if something might happen.

Poetry is the kind of thing you have to see from the corner of your eye. You can be too well prepared for poetry. A conscientious interest in it is worse than no interest at all. . . . It's like a very faint star. If you look straight at it you can't see it, but if you look a little to one side it is there.

And sometimes when they look in the firethey see time going on and someone alone,but they don't say anything.