Quote

It's not a competition, it's a doorway.

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
Doorway
Doorways
Competition

More quotes by Mary Oliver

Image
It's morning, and again I am that lucky person who is in it.
Mary Oliver
Image
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.
Mary Oliver
Image
And I say to my heart: rave on.
Mary Oliver
Image
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Mary Oliver
Image
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.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?
Mary Oliver
Image
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
Mary Oliver
Image
I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable and beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings.
Mary Oliver
Image
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Mary Oliver
Image
Who do you want to be in your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Image
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
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
Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us--
Mary Oliver
Image
Praying It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
Mary Oliver
Image
Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled---to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.
Mary Oliver