Quote

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.

William Stafford

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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Problem
Everything
Parachute
Parachutes
Woven
Thoughtful
Kindness
Broken

More quotes by William Stafford

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Let the bucket of memory down into the well, bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one stirring, no plans. Just being there.
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
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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.
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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
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The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
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It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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...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.
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I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.
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Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.
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If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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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.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, Who are you really, wanderer?-- and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: Maybe I'm a king.
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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.
William Stafford