Quote

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.

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
Think
Along
Invite
Thinking
Please
Invites
Life
Hold
Roll
World
Open
Evening
Morning
Breathe
Party
Close
Hands
Watches
Long
Watch
Evenings

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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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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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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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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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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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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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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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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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Language can do what it can’t 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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If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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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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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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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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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The more you let yourself be distracted from where you are going, the more you are the person that you are. It's not so much like getting lost as it is like getting found.
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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.
William Stafford