William Stafford

“Assurance"You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes. Yellowpulls across the hills and thrums, or in the silence after lightning before it says its names-and then the clouds' wide-mouthed apologies. You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone. Rain will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon, long aisles-you never heard so deep a sound, moss on rock, and years. You turn your head- that's what the silence meant: you're not alone. The whole wide world pours down.”

“I am your own way of looking at things," she said. "When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation”

“They miss the whisper that runsany day in your mind,"Who are you really, wanderer?"--and the answer you have to giveno matter how dark and coldthe world around you is:"Maybe I'm a king.”

“When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone,and the meaning has to go find an author again.- The Trouble With Reading”

“. . . On a sandbarsunlight stretches out its limbs, or is ita sycamore, so brazen, so clean and bold?”

“I heard a bird congratulating itselfall day for being a jay.Nobody cared. But it was gladall over again, and said so, again.”

“Poverty plus confidence equalspioneers. We never doubted.”

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

“Ask MeSome time when the river is ice ask memistakes I have made. Ask me whetherwhat I have done is my life. Othershave come in their slow way intomy thought, and some have tried to helpor to hurt: ask me what differencetheir strongest love or hate has made.I will listen to what you say.You and I can turn and lookat the silent river and wait. We knowthe current is there, hidden; and thereare comings and goings from miles awaythat hold the stillness exactly before us.What the river says, that is what I say.”

“Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.”

“There may be losses too great to understandThat rove after you and--faint and terrible-- rip unknown through your hand.”

“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.”

“The earth says have a place, be what that placerequires; hear the sound the birds implyand see as deep as ridges go behindeach other.”

“This dream the world is having about itselfincludes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail,a groove in the grass my father showed us allone day while meadowlarks were trying to tellsomething better about to happen.”

“Evening came, a paw, to the gray hut by the river.”

“I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.”

“The Way It IsThere’s a thread you follow. It goes amongthings that change. But it doesn’t change.People wonder about what you are pursuing.You have to explain about the thread.But it is hard for others to see.While you hold it you can’t get lost.Tragedies happen; people get hurtor die; and you suffer and get old.Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.You don’t ever let go of the thread.~ William Stafford ~”

“I would exchange all that I have written for the next thing.”

“There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.”

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

“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.”

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

“A Ritual to Read to Each OtherIf you don’t know the kind of person I amand I don’t know the kind of person you area pattern that others made may prevail in the worldand following the wrong god home we may miss our star.For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,a shrug that lets the fragile sequence breaksending with shouts the horrible errors of childhoodstorming out to play through the broken dyke.And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,I call it cruel and maybe the root of all crueltyto know what occurs but not recognize the fact.And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,a remote important region in all who talk:though we could fool each other, we should consider---lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.For it is important that awake people be awake,or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;the signals we give---yes or no, or maybe---should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.”

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

“If you don't know the kind of person I amand I don't know the kind of person you area pattern that others made may prevail in the worldand following the wrong god home we may miss our star.... And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,I call it cruel and maybe the root of all crueltyto know what occurs but not recognize the fact.”

“We think it is calm here, or that our storm is the right size.”

“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?”

“I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.”

“...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.”

“Wisdom is having things right in your lifeand knowing why.”