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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
Quirky
Surprises
Treat
Treats
Surprise
Exercise
Experience
Self

More quotes by William Stafford

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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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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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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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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Keep a journal, and don't assume that your work has to accomplish anything worthy: artists and peace-workers are in it for the long haul, and not to be judged by immediate results.
William Stafford
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
William Stafford
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
William Stafford
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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
William Stafford
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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.
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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Language can do what it can’t say.
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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...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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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
William Stafford