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" Apparently, I've been considered a recluse. "
Mary Oliver
Apparently
Recluse
Considered
Related Quotes:
" 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
Trying
I Am
Too Much
" In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that. "
Mary Oliver
College
Learn
Time
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
Life
You
Beach
" I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it. "
Mary Oliver
Job
Interesting
You
" 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
Love
Life
Live
" My parents didn't care very much what I did, and that was probably a blessing. "
Mary Oliver
Did
Much
Blessing
" I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded. "
Mary Oliver
Much
Noticed
Sort
" I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. "
Mary Oliver
I Believe
Us
Art
" I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force. "
Mary Oliver
Force
Rather
Place
" I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second. "
Mary Oliver
First
India
Feeling
" The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones. "
Mary Oliver
Challenge
Time
New
" 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
Kind
Music
Myself
" You have to be in the world to understand what the spiritual is about, and you have to be spiritual in order to truly be able to accept what the world is about. "
Mary Oliver
Order
World
Spiritual
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
School
Better
Sometimes
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
Early
Powerful
Think
" 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
Think
Morning
You
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
Prayer
Day
Good
" To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. "
Mary Oliver
Our
Attention
Work
" I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished. "
Mary Oliver
Poem
Finished
Know
" Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious. "
Mary Oliver
Conscious
Unconscious
Work
" I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things. "
Mary Oliver
World
Feeling
Gratitude
" I'd rather write about polar bears than people. "
Mary Oliver
Polar
Than
People
" I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day. "
Mary Oliver
Every Day
Day
Read
" To tell you the truth, I believe everything - tigers, trees, stones - are sentient in one way or another. You'd never catch me idly kicking a stone, for example. "
Mary Oliver
Me
Believe
You
" I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life. "
Mary Oliver
Life
Become
Think
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
Life
Good
Good Life
" I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all. "
Mary Oliver
Attention
Too Much
Up
" I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem. "
Mary Oliver
Always
Feel
Necessary
" Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. "
Mary Oliver
Houses
Care
Take Care
" I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else. "
Mary Oliver
Nothing
Else
Always