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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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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Way
World
Legends
Twice
Deep
Second
Happens
More quotes by William Stafford
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.
William Stafford
You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
William Stafford
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?
William Stafford
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
Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
William Stafford
There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
William Stafford
'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
William Stafford
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
The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
William Stafford
Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
William Stafford
There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
William Stafford
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
If you purify the pond, the lilies die
William Stafford
The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
William Stafford
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
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
The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
Language can do what it can’t say.
William Stafford
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
Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.
William Stafford