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Everyone is born a poet - a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?

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
Everyone
Starts
Born
Caring
Persons
Kept
Person
Poet
Real
Question
Work
Stop
Way
Sound
Delighting
People
Words
Discovering

More quotes by William Stafford

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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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All still when summer is over stand shocks in the field, nothing left to whisper, not even good-bye, to the wind. After summer was over we knew winter would come: we knew silence would wait, tall, patient calm.
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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My question is when did other people give up the idea of being a poet? You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?
William Stafford
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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
William Stafford
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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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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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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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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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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.
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A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.
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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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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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The more you let yourself be distracted from where you are going, the more you are the person that you are. It's not so much like getting lost as it is like getting found.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
William Stafford