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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
Surprise
Exercise
Experience
Self
Quirky
Surprises
Treat
Treats
More quotes by William Stafford
Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
William Stafford
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
Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.
William Stafford
You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
William Stafford
Language can do what it can’t say.
William Stafford
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
I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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
A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
William Stafford
When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.
William Stafford
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
A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
William Stafford
The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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
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
The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
William Stafford
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
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
