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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
Trust
Doe
Blossom
Root
Plant
Roots
Flower

More quotes by William Stafford

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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.
William Stafford
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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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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'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
William Stafford
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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.
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.
William Stafford
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A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.
William Stafford
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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?
William Stafford
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
William Stafford
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You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.
William Stafford
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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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.
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
William Stafford
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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
William Stafford
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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
William Stafford
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
William Stafford