Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Like
Madness
Getting
Lost
Found
Persons
Person
Going
Much
Distracted
More quotes by William Stafford
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
A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
William Stafford
It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
William Stafford
My question is when did other people give up the idea of being a poet? You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?
William Stafford
Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
William Stafford
...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
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
The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
William Stafford
The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
William Stafford
And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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
If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
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
A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
William Stafford
Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
William Stafford
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
William Stafford
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
There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
William Stafford
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
They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, Who are you really, wanderer?-- and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: Maybe I'm a king.
William Stafford
