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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
Count
Would
Compassion
Like
Says
People
Security
Character
May
Compass
Might
North
Way
More quotes by William Stafford
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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When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.
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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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A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
William Stafford
Language can do what it can’t say.
William Stafford
The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
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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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
William Stafford
Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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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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You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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My question is when did other people give up the idea of being a poet? You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?
William Stafford