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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

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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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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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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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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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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.
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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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Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
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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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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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Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
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You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
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Language can do what it can’t say.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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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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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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