Quote

For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

Mary Oliver

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Hungry
Bread
Necessary
Ropes
Cold
Fires
Fire
Rope
Words
Poems
Lost
Something
Pockets

More quotes by Mary Oliver

Image
Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
Mary Oliver
Image
Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
Mary Oliver
Image
Today again I am hardly myself. It happens over and over.
Mary Oliver
Image
Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
Mary Oliver
Image
What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?
Mary Oliver
Image
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
Mary Oliver
Image
But I also say this: that light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it's done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.
Mary Oliver
Image
And over one more set of hills, along the sea, the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness and are giving it back to the world. If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness.
Mary Oliver
Image
There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?
Mary Oliver
Image
Sunrise What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire.
Mary Oliver
Image
I know many lives worth living.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
Mary Oliver
Image
The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention.
Mary Oliver
Image
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.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.
Mary Oliver