Quote

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
Code
Ordinary
Secret
Language
Use
Every
Kind
Signals
Hidden

More quotes by William Stafford

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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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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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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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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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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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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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When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone, and the meaning has to go find an author again.
William Stafford
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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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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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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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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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Language can do what it can’t say.
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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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Keep a journal, and don't assume that your work has to accomplish anything worthy: artists and peace-workers are in it for the long haul, and not to be judged by immediate results.
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One way to find your place is like the rain, a million requests for lodging, one that wins, finds your cheek: you find your home.
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You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.
William Stafford
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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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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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
William Stafford