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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
Deep
Maybe
Clear
Around
Give
Giving
Signals
Darkness

More quotes by William Stafford

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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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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.
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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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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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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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.
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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.
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.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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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?
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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?
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...What you fear will not go away it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.
William Stafford
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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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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
William Stafford