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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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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Self
Quirky
Surprises
Treat
Treats
Surprise
Exercise
Experience

More quotes by William Stafford

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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
William Stafford
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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
William Stafford
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
William Stafford
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It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
William Stafford
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
William Stafford
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
William Stafford
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
William Stafford
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Some people are blinded by their experience. Soldiers know how important war is. Owners of slaves learn every day how inferior subject peoples are.
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 signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
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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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.
William Stafford
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
William Stafford
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
William Stafford
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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