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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.
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
Signals
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Hidden
Code
Ordinary
Secret
Language
Use
Every
More quotes by William Stafford
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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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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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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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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The more you let yourself be distracted from where you are going, the more you are the person that you are. It's not so much like getting lost as it is like getting found.
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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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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.
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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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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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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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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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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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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'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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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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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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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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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
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