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
Every
Kind
Signals
Hidden
Code
Ordinary
Secret
Language
Use

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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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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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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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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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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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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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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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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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Language can do what it can’t say.
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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 can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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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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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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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 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.
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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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