I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Writing a poem ... is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography.… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
It was not a choice of writing or not writing. It was a choice of loving my life or not loving my… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
It is no use thinking that writing of poems - the actual writing - can accommodate itself to a social setting, even… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Belief isn't always easy. But this much I have learned--- if not enough else--- to live with my eyes open. — Mary Oliver Copy Share
In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to question. Which are, at the same time, the… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. — Mary Oliver Copy Share
The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees - to learn… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“All important ideas must include the trees, the mountains, and the rivers. • To understand many things you must reach out of your own condition.” — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“Sometimes I think, were I just a little rougher made, I would go altogether to the woods—to my work entirely, and solitude, a few… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“First Snow The snow began here this morning and all day continued, its white rhetoric everywhere calling us back to why, how, whence such beauty… — mary oliver Copy Share
“What can I say that I have not said before? So I’ll say it again. The leaf has a song in it. Stone is… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
“I stood like Adam in his lonely garden On that first morning, shaken out of sleep, Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves, Like… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I… — Mary Oliver Copy Share
