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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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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Darkness
Deep
Maybe
Clear
Around
Give
Giving
Signals

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Language can do what it can’t say.
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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.
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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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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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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.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
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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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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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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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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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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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When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.
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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.
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