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.

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.

A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.

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.

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

So, the world happens twice--_x000D_ once what we see it as;_x000D_ second it legends itself_x000D_ deep, the way it is.

The earth says have a place, be what that place_x000D_ requires; hear the sound the birds imply_x000D_ and see as deep as ridges go behind_x000D_ each other.

Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.

You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.

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.

An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.