Quote

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.

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
Embrace
Experience
Collector
Collectors
Emerging
Participate
Butterfly
Discovery

More quotes by William Stafford

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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
William Stafford
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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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Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.
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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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?
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
William Stafford
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Language can do what it can’t say.
William Stafford
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
William Stafford
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
William Stafford
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
William Stafford