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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.

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
Accepting
Artist
Others
Another
May
Persons
Decides
Able
Standards
Person
Accept

More quotes by William Stafford

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I heard a bird congratulating itself all day for being a jay. Nobody cared. But it was glad all over again, and said so, again.
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
William Stafford
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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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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
William Stafford
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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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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
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
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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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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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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.
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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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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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My question is when did other people give up the idea of being a poet? You know, when we are kids we make up things, we write, and for me the puzzle is not that some people are still writing, the real question is why did the other people stop?
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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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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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.
William Stafford
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
William Stafford
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
William Stafford