Quote

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.

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
Talking
Reason
Dulls
Need
Weakens
Make
Hearing
Things
Saying
World
Hear
Rich
Talk

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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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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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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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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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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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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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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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...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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The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
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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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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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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
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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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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
William Stafford