Mary Oliver

Attention without feeling-is only a report.

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. And it requires a vision “ a faith, to use an old fashioned term. Yes, indeed. 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. Yes, indeed.

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.

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.

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.

Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.

So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.

Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious.

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.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too was a gift

I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it.

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy.

I'd rather write about polar bears than people.

You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

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.

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 very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.

Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When it does, it grows sweeter.

Apparently, I've been considered a recluse.

I simply do not distinguish between work and play.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too was a gift.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

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.

Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I don't ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.

I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life.

A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.

Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems.

I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life.

Sometimes breaking the rules is extending the rules.

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading, walking around the woods in Ohio, where I grew up.

I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider the orderliness of the world.

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.

Wasn't it Emerson who said, 'My life is for itself and not for a spectacle'? I have a happy, full, good life because I hold it private.

There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.

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.

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.

Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.

I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read.

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.

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

Instead of taking the reader by the hand and running him down the hill, I want to lead him into a house of many rooms, and leave him alone in each of them.

I'm going to die one day. I know it's coming for me, too. I'll be a mountain, I'll be a stone on the beach. I'll be nourishment.

Listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?

The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they're full of bicycle trails.

I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it.

Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born.

What can we do but keep on breathing in and out modest and willing and in our places

In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.

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.

I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all.

I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.

I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem.

There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.

One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.

My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work.

I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.

My parents didn't care very much what I did, and that was probably a blessing.

To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.

I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force.

I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation.