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

More quotes by 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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The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
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My question is when did other people give up the idea of being a poet? You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
William Stafford
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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
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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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
William Stafford
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
William Stafford
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
William Stafford
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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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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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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Language can do what it can’t say.
William Stafford
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I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.
William Stafford
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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