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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
Purify
Pond
Ponds
Lilies
Dies

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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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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
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Anyone who breathes is in the rhythm business.
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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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I'll be Pavlov, you be the dog.
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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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So, the world happens twice-- once what we see it as second it legends itself deep, the way it is.
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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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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.
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The ocean and I have many pebbles To find and wash off and roll into shape.
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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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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.
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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 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.
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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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You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about
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Please think about this as you go on. Breathe on the world. Hold out your hands to it. When morning and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.
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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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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.
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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