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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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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
People
Says
Security
Character
May
Might
Compass
Way
North
Would
Count
Like
Compassion
More quotes by William Stafford
You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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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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Language can do what it can’t say.
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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'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
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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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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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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.
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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.
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Everyone is born a poet - a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?
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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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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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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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.
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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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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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