Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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
Many
Pebbles
Wash
Roll
Shape
Shapes
Sea
Ocean
Find
More quotes by William Stafford
The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
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
And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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
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
...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
Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
William Stafford
You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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
There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
William Stafford
What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
William Stafford
An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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
It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
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
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
If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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
People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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
