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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
Roots
Flower
Trust
Doe
Blossom
Root
Plant

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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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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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And the things you know before you hear them these are you and the reason you are in the world.
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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
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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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The earth says have a place, be what that place requires hear the sound the birds imply and see as deep as ridges go behind each other.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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Language can do what it can’t say.
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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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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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The signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-/should be clear/the darkness around us is deep.
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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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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'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
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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