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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
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Hutchinson
Kansas
Every
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Signals
Hidden
Code
Ordinary
Secret
Language
Use
More quotes by William Stafford
A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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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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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
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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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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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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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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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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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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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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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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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