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You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.

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
Happens
Assessment
Today
Shouldn
Done
Product
Writing
Standards
Something
Products
Really
Difference
Make
Differences
Good
Doesn
Inhibit

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The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
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A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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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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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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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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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
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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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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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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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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
William Stafford