Mary Oliver Quotes

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider the orderliness of the world.

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.

The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.

Do you cherish your humble and silky life?

After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.

Things take the time they take. Don't worry.

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.

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

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.

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

I know many lives worth living.

Poetry is a life-cherishing force.

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

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

So every day So every day I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you.

Who do you want to be in your one wild and precious life?

A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.

When it's over I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?

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

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.

The man who has many answers is often found in the theaters of information where he offers, graciously, his deep findings. While the man who has only questions, to comfort himself, makes music.

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

I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.

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

I have trouble with some books because I'm so much in agreement with them I'd rather just sit in the grass myself.

The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.

All my life I have been restless-- I have felt there is something more wonderful than gloss-- than wholeness-- than staying at home.

Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?

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

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

Like Magellan, let us find our islands To die in, far from home, from anywhere Familiar. Let us risk the wildest places, Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.

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.

In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.

We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story.

... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.

I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea.

The language of the poem is the language of particulars.

For some things there are no wrong seasons. Which is what I dream of for me.

Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.

Everybody has to have their little tooth of power. Everybody wants to be able to bite.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

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

And now you'll be telling stories of my coming back and they won't be false, and they won't be true but they'll be real

Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.

I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It's impossible not to remember wild an want it back.

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.

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.

All culture developed as some wild, raw creature strived to live better and longer.

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.