Quotes from Mary Oliver

the past, the future, the doorway that belongs to you and me.

I'll just tell you this: only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one.

A poem that is composed without the sweet and correct formalities of language, which are what sets it apart from the dailiness of ordinary writing, is doomed. It will not fly. It will be raucous and sloppy—the work of an amateur.

Your heart is beating, isn't it? You're not in chains, are you? There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even, possibly, your own.

It has an undeniable value: it exists.

I'm not the river that powerful presence. And I'm not the black oak tree which is patience personified. And I'm not redbird who is a brief life hearted enjoyed. Nor am I mud nor rock nor sand which is holding everything together. No, I am none of these things. Not yet.

Nature there will always be, but it will not be what we have now, much less the deeper fields and woodlands many of us remember from our childhood. The worlds of van Gogh and Turner and Winslow Homer, and Wordsworth too, and Frost and Jeffers and Whitman, are gone, and will not return. We can come to our senses yet, and rescue the world, but we will never return it to anything like its original form.

In this early dancing of a new day— dogs leaping on the beach, dolphins leaping not far from shore— someone is bending over me, is kissing me slowly.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

How perfect to be aboard a ship with maybe a hundred years still in my pocket, but it's late for all of us. And in truth, the only ship there is, is the ship we are all on, burning the world as we go.

Try to find the right place for yourself. If you can't find it, at least dream of it.

Believe me these are not just words talking. This is my life, thinking of the darkness to follow. — Mary Oliver, from "Sand Dabs, Three," West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)

Love still as once you loved, deeply and without patience.

I felt like a little donkey when his burden is finally lifted. Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who nothing--the reason they can fly.

Everything That Was Broken Everything that was broken has forgotten its brokenness. I live now in a sky-house, through every window the sun. Also your presence. Our touching, our stories. Earthy and holy both. How can this be, but it is. Every day has something in it whose name is Forever.

And look! look! look! I think those little fish better wake up and dash themselves away from the hopeless future that is bulging toward them. And probably, if they don't waste time looking for an easier world, they can do it

I felt like a little donkey when his burden is finally lifted. Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing--the reason they can fly.

I saw the difference between doing nothing, or doing a little, and the redemptive act of true effort. Reading, then writing, then desiring to write well, shaped in me that most joyful of circumstances—a passion for work.

There was only this – an idea.

Let me     keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be     astonished.

that love us, that is asleep now, and silent- that has turned itself into snow.

You are young. So you know everything.

I know death is the fascinating snake under the leaves, sliding and sliding; I know the heart loves him too, can't turn away, can't break the spell. Everything wants to enter the slow thickness, aches to be peaceful finally and at any cost. Wants to be stone.

What good does it do to lie all day in the sun loving what is easy? It never grew easy, but at last I grew peaceful: all summer my fear diminished as they bloomed through the water like flowers, like flecks of an uncertain dream, while I lay on the rocks, reaching into the darkness, learning little by little to love our only world.