William Stafford Quotes

Writing has got to be an act of discovery. Finding out things about what one is writing about.

If the playwright knew every little thing about his play, why bother? There must be discovery all the time, otherwise why bother to do it?

The process of being a writer is much more interior than being a scientist, because science is so reactionary.

When writing 'Give and Take' and 'Originals,' the predominant emotion for me was curiosity.

I don't know what I'm going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can't see around the bend and you don't know where you are going to go, which is fun.

As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

I didn't write because I had anything to say, but in order to find out what there was to say.

Writing is the act of discovery.

Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.

As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.

If I had a plot that was all set in advance, why would I want go through the agony of writing the novel? A novel is a kind of exploration and discovery, for me at any rate.

Music is not math. It's science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

I feel that when I began writing, I had a need to know more about the play before I got into it. I think that's the way I was thinking. But my actual experience is that the best way to find out what the structure is, is by writing the play out laterally. You just have got to be brave enough to start without knowing where you are going.

Every writer has to figure out what works best - and often has to select and discard different tools before they find the one that fits.

I try to find more interesting material with each project I do.

I really strive to bring something new to each book. I don't want to write the same book over and over again.

When I'm making stuff, the thing that excites me most is not the result, but the process and trying to do something I've never done before.

I have likened writing a novel to going on a journey, with some notion of the destination I will arrive at, but not the whole picture - which emerges gradually as a series of revelations, as the journey goes along.

I love being a very personal singer-songwriter, but I also like being a scientist or explorer.

Ah, the creative process is the same secret in science as it is in art. They are all the same absolutely.

I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.

My idea of artistry has always been 'try everything until you find out what works.'