Quote

Let the bucket of memory down into the well, bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one stirring, no plans. Just being there.

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
Well
Stirring
Cool
Memory
Plans
Minutes
Memories
Bring
Bucket
Wells
Buckets

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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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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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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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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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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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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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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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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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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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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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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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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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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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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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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