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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
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Hutchinson
Kansas
Might
Compass
Way
North
Count
Would
Compassion
Like
Says
People
Security
Character
May
More quotes by William Stafford
A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.
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Let the bucket of memory down into the well, bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one stirring, no plans. Just being there.
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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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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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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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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
William Stafford
A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
William Stafford
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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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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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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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.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.
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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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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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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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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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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
William Stafford
Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
William Stafford