Quote

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.

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
Behinds
Deep
Behind
Says
Ridges
Hear
Imply
Sound
Birds
Place
Requires
Earth
Bird

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Language can do what it can’t say.
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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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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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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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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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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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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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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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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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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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.
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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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I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as truths already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.
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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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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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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.
William Stafford
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One way to find your place is like the rain, a million requests for lodging, one that wins, finds your cheek: you find your home.
William Stafford