Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Someone
Thought
Much
Something
Writer
Things
Started
Would
Bring
Process
Found

More quotes by William Stafford

Image
'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
William Stafford
Image
All still when summer is over stand shocks in the field, nothing left to whisper, not even good-bye, to the wind. After summer was over we knew winter would come: we knew silence would wait, tall, patient calm.
William Stafford
Image
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
Image
The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
Image
Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
William Stafford
Image
It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
William Stafford
Image
Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
William Stafford
Image
A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
William Stafford
Image
There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
William Stafford
Image
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.
William Stafford
Image
You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
William Stafford
Image
If you purify the pond, the lilies die
William Stafford
Image
Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
William Stafford
Image
You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
William Stafford
Image
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
Image
You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.
William Stafford
Image
A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.
William Stafford
Image
...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.
William Stafford
Image
A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
William Stafford
Image
You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
William Stafford