Mary Oliver Quotes


"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
(Related: Poems, Reading, World)

"Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Poems, Trying, Want)

"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
(Related: Work, Writer)

"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
(Related: Writers, Writing)

"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
"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
(Related: Love, Feelings, Duty, Writers)

"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
(Related: Time, Words)

"I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Job)

"Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Life, Poetry, Profession)

"When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Life, Want, World)

"So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray."
- Mary Oliver
"To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Life, Love, Time, World)

"My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Work, Books, First, Sleep)

"In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Time, College, Years)

"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Work, Attention)

"I simply do not distinguish between work and play."
- Mary Oliver
(Related: Work, Play)