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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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
Snakes
Anywhere
Straight
Decided
Journey
Didn
Snake
More quotes by William Stafford
There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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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.
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.
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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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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
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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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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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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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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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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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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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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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I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as truths already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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