Quotes from Mary Oliver

I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple--or a green field--a place to enter, and in which to feel.

Oh Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing towards you.

If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since we're bound to be something, why not together.

I Have Decided I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It's said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I'm not talking about a vacation. Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am. Are you following me?

Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell others.

and anyway it's just the same old story -- a few people just trying, one way or another, to survive. Mostly, I want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason. And nobody gets out of it, having to swim through the fires to stay in this world.

Of course! the path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it. -from The Swan

How shall I touch you unless it is everywhere?

When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained— are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.

Sing, if you can sing, and if not still be musical inside yourself.

Or maybe it's about the wonderful things that may happen if you break the ropes that are holding you.

We do not think of it every day, but we never forget it: the beloved shall grow old, or ill, and be taken away finally. No matter how ferociously we fight, how tenderly we love, how bitterly we argue, how pervasively we berate the universe, how cunningly we hide, this is what shall happen.

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.

I read my books with diligence, and mounting skill, and gathering certainty. I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life.

If you're John Muir you want trees to live among. If you're Emily, a garden will do. Try to find the right place for yourself. If you can't find it, at least dream of it. When one is alone and lonely, the body gladly lingers in the wind or the rain, or splashes into the cold river, or pushes through the ice-crusted snow. Anything that touches. God, or the gods, are invisible, quite understandable. But holiness is visible, entirely.

I had to go away for a few days so I called the kennel and made an appointment. I guess Bear overheard the conversation. "Love and company," said Bear, "are the adornments that change everything. I know they'll be nice to me, but I'll be sad, sad, sad." And pitifully he wrung his paws. I cancelled the trip.

My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—equal seekers of sweetness.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field, in the middle of the world, breathing

What's magical, sometimes, has deeper roots than reason.

I'll just leave you with this. I don't care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's enough to know that for some people, they exist, and that they dance.

The poem in which the reader does not feel himself or herself a participant is a lecture, listened to from an uncomfortable chair, in a stuffy room, inside a building.

Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

I cherish two sentences and keep them close to my desk. The first is by Flaubert. I came upon it among Van Gough's letters. It says, simply, 'Talent is long patience, and originality an effort of will and of intense observation.