William Stafford
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.Collection: Hurt
It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.Collection: Wake Up
Let the bucket of memory down into the well, bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one stirring, no plans. Just being there.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Rivers
What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.Collection: Writing
You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Artist
If you can say it, it begins to exist.Collection: Ifs
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?Collection: Giving Up
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.Collection: Writing
The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.Collection: Giving
Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.Collection: Literature
It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.Collection: Secret
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.Collection: Running
The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.Collection: Ownership
When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.Collection: Journey
Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.Collection: Decision
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.Collection: Summer
A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.Collection: Writing