A Quote by William Stafford
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.
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
I won't think about what people will say, even when I am actually seeing someone. Somebody will say something, then someone else will contradict it. I can't keep chasing all of them and try and correct everyone.
I had been composing just for myself, and people would say I played so orchestrally, and wondered if I thought about having someone write a piece for me for an orchestra. And I thought, I don't want someone else to write that. You know I finally had made an overhead chart of my drums and what pitches the cymbals and toms were tuned to, and what have you. And I started to compose just with what I had for my solo drumming.
If I've got Writer's Block it generally means that I don't have that much to say or something's not quite connecting. I have had Writer's Block a bunch of times and it's generally because I'm not able to write down what I'm feeling basically. Mostly, I just need to be alone really, or be with someone who can bring that out of me.
Looking at the data and at my drug use and evaluating it carefully just let me see that I wasn't special, but my drug use challenged what I thought about cocaine. Because I would accept when I would say, "What happened to that person?" and someone would say, "They started using cocaine...they went downhill..." I would just accept that, even though I had a different experience and all these other people had a different experience. But I would throw that out because I thought my experience was an aberration.
I don't mind playing someone's girlfriend or wife if I have something to say, if I bring something to the picture, if I can be strong and powerful and say smart things. If not, then it's just boring.
In Chicago, if you tell someone you're a writer, they look at you suspiciously - as if to say "yeah, right." In New York, people don't question the idea. If you say you're a writer, that's what you are.
I know I promised. I said, 'Ask, seek, knock and you will find.' You say, 'But I have found loss. I have found dispossession. I have found letting go.' And I would say to you that until you dispossess what you have you can never possess what I want to give to you. Until you surrender your understanding, you will never get My wisdom. You would say, 'Lord, what is at the end of this process?'
You almost have to step outside yourself and look at you as if you were someone else you really care about and really want to protect. Would you let someone take advantage of that person? Would you let someone use that person you really care about? Or would you speak up for them? If it was someone else you care about, you'd say something. I know you would. Okay, now put yourself back in that body. That person is you. Stand up and tell 'em, "Enough!
You work hard, you sacrifice for everything you do, and in one second, someone can tarnish your name - someone can bad-mouth you, and someone can say things. People let all of the good things gets washed away because someone spoke ill of them.
I'll be walking down the street with a mate, and someone will stop and say 'All right Crouchy, how's things?' and so on. Once they're gone, the person I'm with will say 'Do you know them?' and I'll say 'I've never met them before in my life'. Happens all the time.
I have to say, if someone literally said to me, 'You're going off to a desert island, what is the one thing you would bring?' I would say, 'It's my concealer or you can just kill me now.' I've thought this through! Because I would find, like, berries in a bowl and make blush.
Every writer has something to say, but those writers whose works endure have dared to say something about the things that frighten them, confuse them, challenge them, and occasionally delight them.
I actually like to audition. I prefer to audition for something because I don't want to walk onto a stage or a set and [have someone] say, "You are so far away from what I thought you were going to bring in." I would feel more comfortable to audition and say, "Here's my take on it - take it or leave it".
When someone is bullying you, don't let it get to you. I remember my friends in school, someone said something mean to them, and they really let it get to them. And it really affected them. But I would just say try to ignore it as much as possible and just be yourself.
I once heard someone on a bus say that this guy had gotten under her skin. And it struck me as a remarkable thought - that someone would affect you so deeply they'd always be a part of you.
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