All Mary Oliver Quotes
In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.
Mary Oliver
58% of people like this quote
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Mary Oliver
56% of people like this quote
So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
Mary Oliver
56% of people like this quote
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
54% of people like this quote
Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.
Mary Oliver
52% of people like this quote
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
52% of people like this quote
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
50% of people like this quote
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
50% of people like this quote
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
49% of people like this quote
My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work.
Mary Oliver
47% of people like this quote
I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it.
Mary Oliver
47% of people like this quote
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
45% of people like this quote
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