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.

I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is, why did other people stop?

Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.

You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about.

I'll be me, but I don't like it.

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.

Everyone is born a poet - a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?

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.

Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.

I have a feeling that art is something you do for yourself, and that any time you turn your decisions over to someone else you're postponing at best, your own development. The atmosphere of the workshop should be that of trying out one's own work and accepting the signals from others but not accepting the dictation of others because that is a violation of the spirit of art. Art can't be done by somebody else, it has got to be done by the artist.

What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.

A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.

Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.

Ask Me Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made. I will listen to what you say. 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.

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

The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.

A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.

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.

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.

It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.

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.

People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.