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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.

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
Beach
Rivers
Sea
Ocean
Ends
Even
Upper
Believe
Believes
River

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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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.
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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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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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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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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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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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
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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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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 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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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
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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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