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" 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
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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
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Trying
" I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them. "
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Lot
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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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Much
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Sort
" I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things. "
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" I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life. "
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" 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
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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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" My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work. "
Mary Oliver
Early
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" I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things. "
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World
Feeling
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" I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. "
Mary Oliver
I Believe
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Art
" 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
" I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it. "
Mary Oliver
Now
Feeling
Dance
" 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
" 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've always wanted to write poems and nothing else. "
Mary Oliver
Nothing
Else
Always
" 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
" The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they're full of bicycle trails. "
Mary Oliver
Young
Bicycle
Child
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
" In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that. "
Mary Oliver
College
Learn
Time
" I read Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, every day. "
Mary Oliver
Every Day
Day
Read
" 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
" 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
" Words have not only a definition... but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound. "
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Own
Quality
Only
" 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
" 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
" Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? "
Mary Oliver
You
Plan
Life