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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.

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
Breathes
Rhythm
Breathe
Anyone
Business

More quotes by William Stafford

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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.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
William Stafford
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
William Stafford
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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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.
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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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.
William Stafford
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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
William Stafford
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You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
William Stafford
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I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.
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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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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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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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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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.
William Stafford
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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.
William Stafford
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Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.
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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An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
William Stafford