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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
Ordinary
Secret
Language
Use
Every
Kind
Signals
Hidden
Code
More quotes by William Stafford
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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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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Language can do what it can’t say.
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I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.
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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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Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
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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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Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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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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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.
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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 speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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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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