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

— 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.

— William Stafford

In every town we lived in, there was one great big door ready to open for anyone — the library. And I never met a library I didn’t like.

— William Stafford

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

— William Stafford

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.

— William Stafford

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

— William Stafford

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

— William Stafford

. . . On a sandbar sunlight stretches out its limbs, or is ITA sycamore, so brazen, so clean and bold?

— William Stafford

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

— William Stafford

Reluctant hero, drafted again each Fourth of July, I'll bow and remember you. Who shall we follow next? Who shall we kill next time?

— William Stafford