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" 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
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" Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound. "
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Own
Quality
Only
" To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it. "
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Find
Different
Alert
" 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
" Poetry is meant to be heard. "
Mary Oliver
Heard
Poetry
Meant
" 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
Group
Strange
Up
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all. "
Mary Oliver
Attention
Too Much
Up
" People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work. "
Mary Oliver
Want
Fancy
Need
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
Know
Day
Die
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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 think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life. "
Mary Oliver
Life
Become
Think
" My parents didn't care very much what I did, and that was probably a blessing. "
Mary Oliver
Did
Much
Blessing
" To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. "
Mary Oliver
Our
Attention
Work
" Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. "
Mary Oliver
Houses
Care
Take Care
" 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
Duty
Line
Love
" 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
" I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force. "
Mary Oliver
Force
Rather
Place
" I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things. "
Mary Oliver
World
Feeling
Gratitude
" 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 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
" Apparently, I've been considered a recluse. "
Mary Oliver
Apparently
Recluse
Considered
" I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day. "
Mary Oliver
Every Day
Day
Read