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You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

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
Responsibility
Anyone
Else
Give
Ever
Whimsy
Must
Whimsical
Giving
Inspire
Life
Stop

More quotes by 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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Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
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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There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?
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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The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.
Mary Oliver
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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
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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
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All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing
Mary Oliver
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Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives.
Mary Oliver
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We can know a lot. And still, no doubt, there are rash and wonderful ideas brewing somewhere there are many surprises yet to come.
Mary Oliver
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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.
Mary Oliver
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I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
Mary Oliver
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The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, frog voice now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever from, One or Two Things
Mary Oliver
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People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.
Mary Oliver
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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
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I GO DOWN TO THE SHORE I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall— what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.
Mary Oliver
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And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?
Mary Oliver
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The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.
Mary Oliver
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Today I am altogether without ambition. Where did I get such wisdom?
Mary Oliver