Quote

People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.

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
Wander
Explain
Journey
Spiritual
People
Pursuing
Thread

More quotes by 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
The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
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
The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
Image
You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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
When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone, and the meaning has to go find an author again.
William Stafford
Image
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.
William Stafford
Image
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
Image
Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
William Stafford
Image
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
Image
Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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
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.
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
When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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
Some people are blinded by their experience. Soldiers know how important war is. Owners of slaves learn every day how inferior subject peoples are.
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
Image
And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
William Stafford