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Portrait of Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds

(1942) Poet United States

78 quotes in 370 categories

Sharon Olds writes that poems often grow from everyday objects and memories. She says a poem should not carry heavy burdens but stay simple and honest. She also notes that language can evolve beyond ordinary chatter. She jokes about how a sharp laugh can cut like a tin lid, and she questions how some writers are labeled just because they write about relationships.

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Sharon Olds is a poet from the United States, best known for One secret thing: poems.

Quick Facts About Sharon Olds

Born: November 19, 1942
Nationality: United States
Profession: Poet
Notable works: One secret thing: poems

About Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds is an American poet. She won the first San Francisco State University Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She teaches creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.

Awards & Honors

T. S. Eliot Prize Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize Robert Frost Medal Guggenheim Fellowship Pulitzer Prize for Poetry Wallace Stevens Award Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry

Quotes by Sharon Olds

“...the liquor like fire in his hand”

Fire

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The older I get, the more I feel

Abyss

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A family is a mystery.

Family

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I did not know him, I knew my idea of him.

Idea

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“let’s part equals, as we were in every bed, pure equals of the earth”

Equality

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I wish I wrote more about the world at more distance from myself.

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I have learned to get pleasure from speaking of pain

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Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel as if the world is not going to blow up.

Baseball

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it is forbidden to love where we are not loved

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The older I get, the more I see the power of that young woman, my mother.

Daughter

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I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.

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The older I get, the more I feel almost beautiful.

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To me, the mind seems to be spread out in the whole body - the senses are part of the brain. I…

Body

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The amount of horror one used to hear about in one village could be quite extreme. But one might not have heard…

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Take your vitamins. Exercise. Just work to love yourself as much as you can - not more than the people around you…

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When I quit all these things and said I didn't have any time, I meant I didn't have any time.

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“as if languagelessness was a step up, in evolution, from the chatter of consciousness.”

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Everyone is so different. I sometimes wish I wrote in a different way. You know, that feeling of: So-and-so writes slowly, if…

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“He fell in love with her because I didn't suit him anymore - nor him, me, though I could not see it,…

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Seeing yourself as responsible for the quality of your relationship, as a prime mover in your life, I think is a bold,…

Brokenhearted

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“I've said that he and I had been crazy for each other. But maybe my ex and I were not crazy for…

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“each hour is a room of shame, and I am swimming, swimming, holding my head up, smiling, joking, ashamed, ashamed, like being…

Ashamed

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“There Was an Old Woman Called Nothing-at-All, Who Lived in a Dwelling Exceedingly Small; A Man Stretched His Mouth to the Utmost…

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“Some people think I should be over my ex by now — maybe I thought I might have been over him more…

Life

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I'm not sure that the benefit - as a writer and as a citizen - that I would get from reading at…

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I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by…

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.. to a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is…

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I have never thought I could take it, not even for the children. It is all I have wanted to do, to…

Children

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“The End of World War One Out of the scraped surface of the land men began to emerge, like puppies from the…

Nine months

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“After you flew across the country we got in bed, laid our bodies delicately together, like maps laid face to face, East…

Face to face

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“The next day, I am almost afraid. Love? It was more like dragonflies in the sun, 100 degrees at noon, the ends…

Love

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“ Free Shoes The pairs of shoes stand in rows, polished and jet, like coffins for small pets, lined with off-white. Evacuated…

Antinatalism

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“The Knowing Afterwards, when we have slept, paradise- comaed and woken, we lie a long time looking at each other. I do…

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“Poem of Thanks Years later, long single, I want to turn to his departed back, and say, What gifts we had of…

Gratitude

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“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch,…

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Well, one thing I'm really interested in, when I'm writing, is being accurate.

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I'm probably so out of it at my age that I don't know what people think.

Age

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I didn't have time to sit down and look at the work of a year and choose what to type.

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At one point I took on a new job, and I just didn't have time to do anything but work.

Jobs

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I think this is true for all artists. My senses are very important to me.

Art

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Sharon Olds by topic

Poetry (18) Writing (10)