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" 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
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" I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem. "
Mary Oliver
Always
Feel
Necessary
" In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that. "
Mary Oliver
College
Learn
Time
" 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
" 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 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
" You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul. "
Mary Oliver
You
Soul
Fool
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
House
Want
Hill
" 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
World
My Life
Life
" To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it. "
Mary Oliver
Find
Different
Alert
" I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them. "
Mary Oliver
Lot
Way
Respond
" So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray. "
Mary Oliver
You
Flow
How
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
Perspective
Growing Up
Up
" I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded. "
Mary Oliver
Much
Noticed
Sort
" 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
World
Alive
Me
" 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
" 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
Stop
Walk
Words
" Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound. "
Mary Oliver
Own
Quality
Only
" Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. "
Mary Oliver
Poetry
Earth
Arts
" I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else. "
Mary Oliver
Nothing
Else
Always
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
Small
Love
Life
" 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
" I simply do not distinguish between work and play. "
Mary Oliver
Simply
Work
Between
" Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? "
Mary Oliver
You
Plan
Life
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
Effort
Reason
Me
" My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work. "
Mary Oliver
Early
Books
Work
" I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it. "
Mary Oliver
Now
Feeling
Dance
" 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
" Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. "
Mary Oliver
Houses
Care
Take Care
" I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. "
Mary Oliver
I Believe
Us
Art
" 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
Way
Your
You