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

More quotes by William Stafford

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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
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It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
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Language can do what it can’t say.
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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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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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It is this impulse to change the quality of experience that I recognize as central to creation. . . . Out of all that could be done, you choose one thing. What that one thing is, nothing else can tell you--you come at it over unmarked snow.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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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.
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
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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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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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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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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.
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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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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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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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Everyone is born a poet - a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?
William Stafford