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I want to be braver and more honest about my life. When you're sexually abused, there's a lot of damage.

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
Braver
Abused
Sexually
Damage
Honest
Life

More quotes by Mary Oliver

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With words, I could build a world I could live in. I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation.
Mary Oliver
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What misery to be afraid of death. What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.
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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So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
Mary Oliver
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One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.
Mary Oliver
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Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.
Mary Oliver
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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
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Sing, if you can sing, and it not still be musical inside yourself.
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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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
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maybe death isn't darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us--
Mary Oliver
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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
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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
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How heron comes It is a negligence of the mind not to notice how at dusk heron comes to the pond and stands there in his death robes, perfect servant of the system, hungry, his eyes full of attention, his wings pure light
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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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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Always there is something worth saying about glory, about gratitude.
Mary Oliver
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Today again I am hardly myself. It happens over and over.
Mary Oliver
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I know many lives worth living.
Mary Oliver
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Belief isn't always easy. But this much I have learned--- if not enough else--- to live with my eyes open.
Mary Oliver