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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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There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?
Mary Oliver
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For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
Mary Oliver
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One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.
Mary Oliver
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In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.
Mary Oliver
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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
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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
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And now you'll be telling stories of my coming back and they won't be false, and they won't be true but they'll be real
Mary Oliver
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... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.
Mary Oliver
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When will you have a little pity for every soft thing that walks through the world, yourself included.
Mary Oliver
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The sea isn't a place but a fact, and a mystery.
Mary Oliver
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Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.
Mary Oliver
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All my life I have been restless-- I have felt there is something more wonderful than gloss-- than wholeness-- than staying at home.
Mary Oliver
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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
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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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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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On poetry: Everyone wants to know what it means. But nobody is asking, How does it feel?
Mary Oliver
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It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone.
Mary Oliver
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Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
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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
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I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.
Mary Oliver