Quote

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

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
Nobody
Heard
Congratulating
Cared
Glad
Bird

More quotes by 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
And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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
People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
William Stafford
Image
Keep a journal, and don't 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.
William Stafford
Image
I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
William Stafford
Image
Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
William Stafford
Image
You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
William Stafford
Image
Language can do what it can’t say.
William Stafford
Image
Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.
William Stafford
Image
If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
Image
Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
William Stafford
Image
It is this impulse to change the quality of experience that I recognize as central to creation. . . . Out of all that could be done, you choose one thing. What that one thing is, nothing else can tell you--you come at it over unmarked snow.
William Stafford
Image
When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
William Stafford
Image
You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
William Stafford
Image
You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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
'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
William Stafford
Image
You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
William Stafford
Image
The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them — those are you, those are why you are in the world.
William Stafford