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What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.

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
Matter
Writing
Writer
Write
Happens

More quotes by 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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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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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
William Stafford
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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
William Stafford
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You can lie at a banquet but you have to be honest in the kitchen.
William Stafford
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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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Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.
William Stafford
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
William Stafford
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Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now?
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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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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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If you can say it, it begins to exist.
William Stafford
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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
William Stafford
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A poem is a serious joke, a truth that has learned jujitsu.
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 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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Language can do what it can’t say.
William Stafford
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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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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