Quotes by William Stafford

Wisdom is having things right in your lifeand knowing why.

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.

I heard a bird congratulating itselfall day for being a jay.Nobody cared. But it was gladall over again, and said so, again.

This dream the world is having about itselfincludes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,a groove in the grass my father showed us allone day while meadowlarks were trying to tellsomething better about to happen.

If you dont know the kind of person I amand I dont 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.

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

. . . On a sandbarsunlight stretches out its limbs, or is ita sycamore, so brazen, so clean and bold?

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 dont have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.

They miss the whisper that runsany day in your mind,Who are you really, wanderer?--and the answer you have to giveno matter how dark and coldthe world around you is:Maybe Im a king.

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

...What you fear will not go away; it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. Thats the world, and we all live there.

I Have a Witness Sometimes a center the soul can recognize will speak from anywhere , inside a mountain, or froma whirlwind ... The world can take, the soulrestores. A million wrong voices proclaim One light lives forever.

They say that history is going on somewhere.They say it wont stop. I have heldOne picture still for a long time and waited.

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

Reluctant hero, drafted again each Fourthof July, Ill bow and remember you. Whoshall we follow next? Who shall we killnext time?

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

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isnt music

An owl sound wandered along the road with me.I didnt hear it--I breathed it into my ears.

Keep a journal, and dont 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.

Between roars the lion purrs.