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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
Give
Giving
Signals
Darkness
Deep
Maybe
Clear
Around

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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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Security of character would be like a compass, you know? Other people may say that this way is north, or this way might be north. But the compass just says -- north. That's what we count on.
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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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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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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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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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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.
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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.
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.
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The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying things you do not have to say weakens your talk. Hearing things you do not need to hear dulls your hearing. And things you know before you hear them — those are you, those are why you are in the world.
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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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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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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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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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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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