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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
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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
Exists
Built
Attention
Soul
Firsts
First
Wildest
Thing
Wisest
Entirely
More quotes by Mary Oliver
I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.
Mary Oliver
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
Mary Oliver
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
Also I wanted to be able to love And we all know how that one goes, don't we? Slowly
Mary Oliver
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
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
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
I know many lives worth living.
Mary Oliver
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
There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.
Mary Oliver
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
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
And I say to my heart: rave on.
Mary Oliver
Poetry is a serious business literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.
Mary Oliver
Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives.
Mary Oliver
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
A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
Mary Oliver
There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they are in another world altogether.
Mary Oliver
I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.
Mary Oliver
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
