Mary Oliver Quotes - Page 9

Quotes about:

• The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers--has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.

  Mary Oliver

  Flower, Taken, Writing

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• I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second. And in America, we have it backwards.

  Mary Oliver

  Taken, America, Feelings

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• 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. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading, walking around the woods in Ohio, where I grew up.

  Mary Oliver

  Reading, Writing, Heart

  Interview with Maria Shriver, www.oprah.com. March 9, 2011.

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• Drive down any road, take a train or an airplane across the world, leave your old life behind, die and be born again~ wherever you arrive they'll be there first, glossy and rowdy and indistinguishable. The deep muscle of the world.

  Mary Oliver

  Airplane, Rowdy, World

  Mary Oliver (1992). “New and Selected Poems”, Beacon Press (MA)

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• Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine

  Mary Oliver

  Despair, Wild Geese, Mines

  Mary Oliver (1986). “Dream Work”, p.14, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• Writing a poem ... is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.

  Mary Oliver

  Writing, Heart, Skills

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.7, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I grew up in a sad, depressed place. I got out. Poetry saved my life.

  Mary Oliver

  Grew Up, Grew, Sad Depressed

  Source: www.bostonglobe.com

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• The world is: fun, and familiar, and healthful, and unbelievably refreshing, and lovely. And it is the theater of the spiritual; it is the multiform utterly obedient to a mystery.

  Mary Oliver

  Spiritual, Fun, Lovely

  "Long Life: Essays and Other Writings". Book by Mary Oliver, 2004.

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• Sing, if you can sing, and it not still be musical inside yourself.

  Mary Oliver

  Musical, Stills, Ifs

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• Love, love, love, says Percy. And hurry as fast as you can along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust. Then, go to sleep. Give up your body heat, your beating heart. Then, trust.

  Mary Oliver

  Beach, Giving Up, Heart

  Mary Oliver (2008). “The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays”, p.77, Beacon Press

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• ... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.

  Mary Oliver

  Running, Thinking, Rivers

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• GOING TO WALDEN It isn't very far as highways lie. I might be back by nightfall, having seen The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water. Friends argue that I might be wiser for it. They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper: How dull we grow from hurrying here and there! Many have gone, and think me half a fool To miss a day away in the cool country. Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish, Going to Walden is not so easy a thing As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

  Mary Oliver

  Country, Lying, Book

  Mary Oliver (1972). “The River Styx, Ohio, and other poems”

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• What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?

  Mary Oliver

  Life, Breathing, Purpose

  Mary Oliver (1998). “West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.

  Mary Oliver

  Swim, Might, Way

  Mary Oliver (2016). “Upstream: Selected Essays”, p.15, Penguin

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• 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.

  Mary Oliver

  Poetry, Way, Empty

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• LITTLE DOGS RHAPSODY IN THE NIGHT (PERCY THREE) He puts his cheek against mine and makes small, expressive sounds. And when I'm awake, or awake enough he turns upside down, his four paws in the air and his eyes dark and fervent. Tell me you love me, he says. Tell me again. Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over he gets to ask it. I get to tell.

  Mary Oliver

  Dog, Eye, Dark

  Mary Oliver (2017). “Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver”, p.43, Penguin

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• In the glare of your mind, be modest. And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

  Mary Oliver

  Humility, Mind, Glare

  Mary Oliver (2017). “Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver”, p.214, Penguin

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• A poet's interest in craft never fades, of course.

  Mary Oliver

  Crafts, Poet, Interest

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.4, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it--indeed the world's need of it--these never pass.

  Mary Oliver

  Moving, Fall, Voice

  Mary Oliver (1994). “A Poetry Handbook”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.

  Mary Oliver

  Country, Song, Fall

  Mary Oliver (1986). “Dream Work”, p.3, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.

  Mary Oliver

  Alive, Littles, Wanted

  Mary Oliver (1986). “Dream Work”, p.3, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• 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.

  Mary Oliver

  School, Might, Gathering

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• How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of attention, his wings pure light

  Mary Oliver

  Eye, Light, Wings

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• ...whoever you are, not matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh & exciting - over & over announcing your place in the family of things.

  Mary Oliver

  Lonely, Nature, Imagination

  Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese”

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• 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.

  Mary Oliver

  Notebook, Writing, Journey

  Interview with Renee Olander, www.awpwriter.org. September, 1994.

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