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If you can say it, it begins to exist.

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
Begins
Exist

More quotes by 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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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
William Stafford
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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
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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.
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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It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half.
William Stafford
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
William Stafford
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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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I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as truths already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.
William Stafford
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One way to find your place is like the rain, a million requests for lodging, one that wins, finds your cheek: you find your home.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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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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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
William Stafford
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Some people are blinded by their experience. Soldiers know how important war is. Owners of slaves learn every day how inferior subject peoples are.
William Stafford
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
William Stafford
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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?
William Stafford
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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
William Stafford
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
William Stafford