Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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

Related Quotes:

" I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all. "

Mary Oliver

Attention

Too Much

" I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things. "

" My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work. "

" I like books that are fat and full. "

" 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. "

" Apparently, I've been considered a recluse. "

" I simply do not distinguish between work and play. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. "

" I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished. "

" 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. "

" The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones. "

" I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. "

Mary Oliver

I Believe

Art

" In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that. "

" I'd rather write about polar bears than people. "

" Poetry is meant to be heard. "

" One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. "

" I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? "

" I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life. "

" I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them. "

" I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded. "

" 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. "

" Sometimes breaking the rules is extending the rules. "

" My parents didn't care very much what I did, and that was probably a blessing. "

" 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. "

" People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work. "