I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
from the complications of loving you i think there is no end or return. no answer, no coming out of it. which… — 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
I learn a lot about my poems when I read them by the way people respond to them. — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. We don't have to rely totally… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
To tell you the truth, I believe everything - tigers, trees, stones - are sentient in one way or another. You'd never… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I would say that there exists a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
Sunrise What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever… — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
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… — 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
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
Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful? — Mary Oliver Copy Share Image
I had a dog who loved flowers. Briskly she went through the fields, yet paused for the honeysuckle or the rose, her… — 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