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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
Every
Kind
Signals
Hidden
Code
Ordinary
Secret
Language
Use
More quotes by William Stafford
The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
William Stafford
Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
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Language can do what it can’t say.
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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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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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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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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
You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
William Stafford
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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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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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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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.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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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
