I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work. — 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… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
If I have any lasting worth, it will be because I have tried to make people remember what the Earth is meant… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive… — 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
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
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
