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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
Security
Character
May
Might
Compass
Way
North
Would
Count
Like
Compassion
People
Says
More quotes by William Stafford
People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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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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Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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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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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
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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.
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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 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.
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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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.
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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.
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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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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Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
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