Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
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
Artist
Others
Another
May
Persons
Decides
Able
Standards
Person
Accept
Accepting
More quotes by William Stafford
When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
William Stafford
Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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
I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.
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
Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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
Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
William Stafford
What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
William Stafford
The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
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
If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
William Stafford
When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone, and the meaning has to go find an author again.
William Stafford
Let the bucket of memory down into the well, bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one stirring, no plans. Just being there.
William Stafford
A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
William Stafford
The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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
I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
William Stafford
An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
William Stafford
