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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?

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
Respect
Bring
Better
Ever
Right
Wherever
World
Breathing
Carry
Gift

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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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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
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You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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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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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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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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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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
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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 speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
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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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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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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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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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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