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" Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. "
Mary Oliver
Houses
Care
Take Care
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second. "
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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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" Sometimes breaking the rules is extending the rules. "
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Sometimes
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" We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. "
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" I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it. "
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Job
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" 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
" 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 like books that are fat and full. "
Mary Oliver
Books
Full
Fat
" I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. "
Mary Oliver
I Believe
Us
Art
" To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it. "
Mary Oliver
Find
Different
Alert
" You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul. "
Mary Oliver
You
Soul
Fool
" 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
" One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. "
Mary Oliver
Know
Understood
Poetry
" 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
" 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. "
Mary Oliver
Poem
Finished
Know
" 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
" 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
" I'd rather write about polar bears than people. "
Mary Oliver
Polar
Than
People
" 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 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
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Family
" I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day. "
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Day
Read
" Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound. "
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Quality
Only
" I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded. "
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Noticed
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" 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. "
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World
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" So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray. "
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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
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