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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason 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
Hear
Reason
Things
World

More quotes by William Stafford

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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.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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It is this impulse to change the quality of experience that I recognize as central to creation. . . . Out of all that could be done, you choose one thing. What that one thing is, nothing else can tell you--you come at it over unmarked snow.
William Stafford
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
William Stafford
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
William Stafford
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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
William Stafford
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
William Stafford
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
William Stafford
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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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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
William Stafford
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
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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?
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.
William Stafford
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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
William Stafford
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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
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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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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.
William Stafford
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
William Stafford