Mary Oliver Quotes

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My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work.

If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.

In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.

I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write.

Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.

As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other.

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.

Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.

So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.

I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.

I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.

I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life.

To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.

One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.

I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life.

I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read.

Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious.

There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

My parents didn't care very much what I did, and that was probably a blessing.

I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.

Apparently, I've been considered a recluse.

I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation.

The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they're full of bicycle trails.

I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it.

It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone.

Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born.

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

I simply do not distinguish between work and play.

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.

I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.

I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it.

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