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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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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
Believe
Completely
Scene
Writer
Wells
Well
Done
Invasive
Work
Vanish
Much
Revelations
More quotes by 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
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
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver
Poetry is a river many voices travel in it poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless each arrives in an historical context almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world's willingness to receive it--indeed the world's need of it--these never pass.
Mary Oliver
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
I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.
Mary Oliver
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
We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story.
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
I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.
Mary Oliver
Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
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
I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion - that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books - can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.
Mary Oliver
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Mary Oliver
A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist.
Mary Oliver
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
A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
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
I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere I finally just stop and write.
Mary Oliver
There is only one question: / how to love this world.
Mary Oliver
