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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.

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
Like
Madness
Getting
Lost
Found
Persons
Person
Going
Much
Distracted

More quotes by William Stafford

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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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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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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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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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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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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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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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 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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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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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 a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone, and the meaning has to go find an author again.
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It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.
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A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.
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I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.
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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
William Stafford