Quote

As long as you're dancing, you can break the rules.

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
Dancing
Rules
Dance
Break
Long

More quotes by Mary Oliver

Image
This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention.
Mary Oliver
Image
I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.
Mary Oliver
Image
I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.
Mary Oliver
Image
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Mary Oliver
Image
It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.
Mary Oliver
Image
I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.
Mary Oliver
Image
People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.
Mary Oliver
Image
And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.
Mary Oliver
Image
He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.
Mary Oliver
Image
The three ingredients of poetry: the mystery of the universe, spiritual curiosity, the energy of language.
Mary Oliver
Image
And I say to my heart: rave on.
Mary Oliver
Image
... Let us risk the wildest places, Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.
Mary Oliver
Image
Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life.
Mary Oliver
Image
Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dak trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more the prettiness.
Mary Oliver
Image
Music: what so many sentences aspire to be.
Mary Oliver
Image
After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.
Mary Oliver
Image
The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.
Mary Oliver
Image
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
Image
Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
Mary Oliver
Image
It's not a competition, it's a doorway.
Mary Oliver