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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

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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Doe
Blossom
Root
Plant
Roots
Flower
Trust

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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
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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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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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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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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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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.
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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?
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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Language can do what it can’t say.
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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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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
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Once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes and we come back changed but safe, quiet, grateful.
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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 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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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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