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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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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
Need
Needs
Work
People
Fancy
Poetry
More quotes by 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
Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?
Mary Oliver
I learned to build bookshelves and brought books to my room, gathering them around me thickly. I read by day and into the night. I thought about perfectibility, and deism, and adjectives, and clouds, and the foxes, I locked my door, from the inside, and leaped from the roof and went to the woods, by day or darkness.
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
Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
Mary Oliver
The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. I don't say this without reckoning in the sorrow, the worry, the many diminishments. But surely it is then that a person's character shines or glooms.
Mary Oliver
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
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
Mary Oliver
Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.
Mary Oliver
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
Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.
Mary Oliver
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
Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Mary Oliver
Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone.
Mary Oliver
You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Mary Oliver
As long as you're dancing, you can break the rules.
Mary Oliver
And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old-or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.
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
Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.
Mary Oliver
Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead.
Mary Oliver
