Quote

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.

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
Artists
Journal
Results
Immediate
Peace
Judged
Artist
Assume
Keep
Assuming
Anything
Accomplish
Work
Worthy
Long
Workers
Haul

More quotes by William Stafford

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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
William Stafford
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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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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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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You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.
William Stafford
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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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.
William Stafford
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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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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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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.
William Stafford
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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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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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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.
William Stafford
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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?
William Stafford
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
William Stafford
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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
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
William Stafford