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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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William Stafford
Age: 79 †
Born: 1914
Born: January 17
Died: 1993
Died: August 28
Author
Poet
Writer
Hutchinson
Kansas
Something
Happen
Like
Known
Experiment
Rather
Truths
Jobs
Experiments
Happens
Discovered
Writing
Discovery
Trying
Communication
Going
Already

More quotes by William Stafford

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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.
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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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Language can do what it can’t say.
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Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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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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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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.
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They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, Who are you really, wanderer?-- and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: Maybe I'm a king.
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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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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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It is as if the ordinary language we use every day has a hidden set of signals, a kind of secret code.
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Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?
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.
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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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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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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