Quotes of William Stafford - somelinesforyou

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

- William Stafford

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

- William Stafford

“ 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. ~ William Stafford ~ ”

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

“ This dream the world is having about itself includes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail, a groove in the grass my father showed us all one day while meadowlarks were trying to tell something better about to happen. ”

- William Stafford

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

- William Stafford

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

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

“ 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 ”

- William Stafford

“ 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 ”

- William Stafford

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

- William Stafford

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

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

“ Saying the things you do not have to say weakens your talk. ”

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

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

- William Stafford

“ I have this feeling of wending my way or plundering through a mysterious jungle of possibilities when I am writing. This jungle has not been explored by previous writers. It never will be explored. It's endlessly varying as we progress through the experience of time… ”

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

“ Next time what I'd do is look at the earth before saying anything. I'd stop just before going into a house and be an emperor for a minute and listen better to the wind or to the air being still. ”

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

“ The saddest are those not right in their lives who are acting to make things right for others: they act only from the self — and that self will never be right: no luck, no help, no wisdom. ”

- William Stafford

“ I have this feeling of wending my way or plundering through a mysterious jungle of possibilities when I am writing. This jungle has not been explored by previous writers. It never will be explored. It's endlessly varying as we progress through the experience of time… ”

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

“ I have this feeling of wending my way or plundering through a mysterious jungle of possibilities when I am writing. This jungle has not been explored by previous writers. It never will be explored. It's endlessly varying as we progress through the experience of time… ”

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

“ You happy beings, watch every face for those you pass caught in the midst of life by some horror, their souls gone dim, cursed or unlucky, exiled under a stone. ”

- William Stafford

“ 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. ”

- William Stafford

“ I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language. ”

- William Stafford
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