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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

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Mary Oliver
Age: 83 †
Born: 1935
Born: September 10
Died: 2019
Died: January 17
Climate Activist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Maple Heights
Ohio
Mary Jane Oliver
Time
Words
Anywhere
Write
Finally
Scribbling
Doe
Begin
Sauntering
Wells
Walking
Trekking
Well
Walk
Strolling
Writing
Journey
Notebook
Going
Walks
Hiking
Things
Stop
Wander

More quotes by Mary Oliver

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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.
Mary Oliver
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When When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know any of us, what happens then. So I try not to miss anything. I think, in my whole life, I have never missed The full moon or the slipper of its coming back. Or, a kiss. Well, yes, especially a kiss.
Mary Oliver
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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.
Mary Oliver
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On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?
Mary Oliver
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Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
Mary Oliver
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I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion - that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.
Mary Oliver
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You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.
Mary Oliver
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We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story.
Mary Oliver
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Today again I am hardly myself. It happens over and over.
Mary Oliver
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You never know / What opportunity / Is going to travel to you, / Or through you.
Mary Oliver
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Who do you want to be in your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
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As long as you're dancing, you can break the rules.
Mary Oliver
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We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.
Mary Oliver
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You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.
Mary Oliver
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Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
Mary Oliver
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It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.
Mary Oliver
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Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
Mary Oliver
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I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver
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The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. I don't say this without reckoning in the sorrow, the worry, the many diminishments. But surely it is then that a person's character shines or glooms.
Mary Oliver
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So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
Mary Oliver