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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.
William Stafford
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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
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More quotes by William Stafford
You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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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Language can do what it can’t say.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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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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A speech is something you say so as to distract attention from what you do not say.
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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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?
William Stafford
Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
William Stafford
The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.
William Stafford
If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
William Stafford
People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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?
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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.
William Stafford
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.
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
If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
William Stafford