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
Emerging
Participate
Butterfly
Discovery
Embrace
Experience
Collector
Collectors

More quotes by 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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
William Stafford
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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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.
William Stafford
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
William Stafford
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
William Stafford
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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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Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
William Stafford
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The more you let yourself be distracted from where you are going, the more you are the person that you are. It's not so much like getting lost as it is like getting found.
William Stafford
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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
William Stafford
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
William Stafford
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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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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It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
William Stafford