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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.

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
Persons
Following
Person
Star
Made
Missing
Kind
Stars
World
Wrong
Prevail
Others
Pattern
Home
Patterns
May
Miss

More quotes by William Stafford

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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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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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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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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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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.
William Stafford
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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Some people are blinded by their experience. Soldiers know how important war is. Owners of slaves learn every day how inferior subject peoples are.
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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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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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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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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.
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.
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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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It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
William Stafford