Quote

It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.

William Stafford

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Love
Wakes
Touch
Half
Universe
Whole
Right

More quotes by William Stafford

Image
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
Image
'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
William Stafford
Image
A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
William Stafford
Image
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
Image
Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
William Stafford
Image
...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
Image
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
Image
If you purify the pond, the lilies die
William Stafford
Image
Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
William Stafford
Image
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
Image
There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
William Stafford
Image
The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
William Stafford
Image
You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
William Stafford
Image
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
Image
I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.
William Stafford
Image
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
Image
The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
Image
When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.
William Stafford
Image
A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
William Stafford
Image
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