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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
Parachute
Parachutes
Woven
Thoughtful
Kindness
Broken
Problem
Everything

More quotes by William Stafford

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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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The earth says have a place, be what that place requires hear the sound the birds imply and see as deep as ridges go behind each other.
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When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone, and the meaning has to go find an author again.
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
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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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I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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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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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.
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You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
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The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them — those are you, those are why you are in the world.
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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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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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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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One way to find your place is like the rain, a million requests for lodging, one that wins, finds your cheek: you find your home.
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
William Stafford