Quote

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.

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
Come
Limits
Tasted
Gold
Streams
Quiet
Limit
Safe
Season
Beyond
Touched
Changed
Seasons
Found
Grateful
Waterfall
Back
Changes
Waterfalls

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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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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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The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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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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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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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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?
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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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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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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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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 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 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 you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.
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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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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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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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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