151 Quotes by 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.

If you purify the pond, the lilies die

'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'

If you can say it, it begins to exist.

You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.

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

It is this impulse to change the quality of experience that I recognize as central to creation. . . . Out of all that could be done, you choose one thing. What that one thing is, nothing else can tell you--you come at it over unmarked snow.

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

Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.