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All Quotes by author - Mary Oliver

" 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. "

" Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they're thirsty. That's prayer. They don't live an unconscious life, they simply have no language to talk about these things. But they are grateful for the good things that come along. "

" Apparently, I've been considered a recluse. "

" 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. "

" At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all. "

" 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. "

" Believe me, if anybody has a job and starts at 9, there's no reason why they can't get up at 4:30 or five and write for a couple of hours, and give their employers their second-best effort of the day - which is what I did. "

" I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things. "

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

" I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I'd rather write about polar bears than people. "

" If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant to look like. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

Material Things

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

" I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished. "

" I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them. "

" I like books that are fat and full. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day. "

" I simply do not distinguish between work and play. "

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

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