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" 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. "
Mary Oliver
People
Children
Know
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" I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day. "
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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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" In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that. "
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" My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work. "
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" I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings. "
Mary Oliver
Writing
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Trying
" 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
" One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. "
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" 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
" 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 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
" I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished. "
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Poem
Finished
Know
" I simply do not distinguish between work and play. "
Mary Oliver
Simply
Work
Between
" I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things. "
Mary Oliver
Curious
You
Material Things
" 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
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
Worth
Earth
People
" 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
" 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
" 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
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" I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation. "
Mary Oliver
World
Childhood
Family
" I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it. "
Mary Oliver
Now
Feeling
Dance
" I like books that are fat and full. "
Mary Oliver
Books
Full
Fat
" I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force. "
Mary Oliver
Force
Rather
Place
" 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
" 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. "
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Your
You
" 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
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" To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it. "
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Find
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Alert
" I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. "
Mary Oliver
I Believe
Us
Art