William Stafford Quotes
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A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
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'Be alive,' the land says, 'listen - this is your time, your world, your pleasure.'
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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.
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Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
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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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People wander about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread.
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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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There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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If you purify the pond, the lilies die
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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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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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The greatest ownership of all is to glance around and understand.
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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 root and the flower have to trust each other. If the root does not trust, the plant won't blossom.
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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.
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Once you decide to do right, life is easy, there are no distractions.
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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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There are so many things admirable people do not understand.
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Literature is not a picture of life, but is a separate experience with its own kind of flow and enhancement.