Quote

Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.

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
Flow
Literature
Experience
Kind
Life
Enhancement
Separate
Picture

More quotes by William Stafford

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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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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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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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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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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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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
William Stafford
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Language can do what it can’t say.
William Stafford
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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.
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