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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
Language
Use
Every
Kind
Signals
Hidden
Code
Ordinary
Secret

More quotes by William Stafford

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The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
William Stafford
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I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
William Stafford
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
William Stafford
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...What you fear will not go away it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.
William Stafford
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
William Stafford
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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
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
William Stafford
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
William Stafford
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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?
William Stafford
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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
William Stafford
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Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.
William Stafford
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
William Stafford