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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
William Stafford
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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Self
Quirky
Surprises
Treat
Treats
Surprise
Exercise
Experience
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
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
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
If you purify the pond, the lilies die
William Stafford
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
You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
William Stafford
Language can do what it can’t say.
William Stafford
People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
William Stafford
When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
William Stafford
I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as truths already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.
William Stafford
Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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
'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
William Stafford
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
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
William Stafford
The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
William Stafford
What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
William Stafford
If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
