My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I have trouble with some books because I'm so much in agreement with them I'd rather just sit in the grass myself. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“The poem was made not just to exist, but to speak—to be company. It was everything that was needed, when everything was… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Poetry is a serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Instead of taking the reader by the hand and running him down the hill, I want to lead him into a house… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
You may not agree, you may not care, but if you are holding this book you should know that of all the… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that.… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I learned to build bookshelves and brought books to my room, gathering them around me thickly. I read by day and into… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“The Morning Paper Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition is the best for by evening you now that you at least… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“Percy and Books Percy does not like it when I read a book. He puts his face over the top of it,… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“Sometimes I think, were I just a little rougher made, I would go altogether to the woods—to my work entirely, and solitude,… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world,… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
