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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.

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
Purpose
Whole
Never
World
Pours
Aimed
Wide
Birth
Alone

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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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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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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
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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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The root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
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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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...What you fear will not go away it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.
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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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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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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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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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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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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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A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, Who are you really, wanderer?-- and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: Maybe I'm a king.
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