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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It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.
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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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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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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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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
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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 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.
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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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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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Let the bucket of memory down into the well, bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one stirring, no plans. Just being there.
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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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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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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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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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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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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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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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.
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