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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.
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
Memory
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Minutes
Memories
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Bucket
Wells
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Well
Stirring
Cool
More quotes by William Stafford
And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
William Stafford
Keep a journal, and don't assume that your work has to accomplish anything worthy: artists and peace-workers are in it for the long haul, and not to be judged by immediate results.
William Stafford
When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone, and the meaning has to go find an author again.
William Stafford
It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.
William Stafford
It is this impulse to change the quality of experience that I recognize as central to creation. . . . Out of all that could be done, you choose one thing. What that one thing is, nothing else can tell you--you come at it over unmarked snow.
William Stafford
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.
William Stafford
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.
William Stafford
Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
William Stafford
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.
William Stafford
Language can do what it can’t say.
William Stafford
When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.
William Stafford
If you purify the pond, the lilies die
William Stafford
So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
William Stafford
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
William Stafford
Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
William Stafford
I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
William Stafford
Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
William Stafford
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.
William Stafford
Everyone is born a poet - a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?
William Stafford
A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
William Stafford
