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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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
Journey
Didn
Snake
Snakes
Anywhere
Straight
Decided
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
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
The earth says have a place, be what that place requires hear the sound the birds imply and see as deep as ridges go behind each other.
William Stafford
And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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
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
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
You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
William Stafford
'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
William Stafford
You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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
A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
William Stafford
Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
William Stafford
I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.
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
A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
William Stafford
You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
William Stafford
Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
William Stafford
A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
William Stafford