Quote

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.

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
Congratulating
Cared
Glad
Bird
Nobody
Heard

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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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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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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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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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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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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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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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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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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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Security of character would be like a compass, you know? Other people may say that this way is north, or this way might be north. But the compass just says -- north. That's what we count on.
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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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I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as truths already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.
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