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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
Hidden
Code
Ordinary
Secret
Language
Use
Every
Kind
Signals

More quotes by William Stafford

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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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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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My question is when did other people give up the idea of being a poet? You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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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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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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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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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.
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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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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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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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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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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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The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
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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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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
William Stafford