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If you purify the pond, the lilies die

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
Dies
Purify
Pond
Ponds
Lilies

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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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When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone, and the meaning has to go find an author again.
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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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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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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.
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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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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.
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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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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
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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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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.
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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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When the snake decided to go straight, he didn't get anywhere.
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
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You were aimed from birth: you will never be alone... The whole wide world pours down.
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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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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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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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