Quotes from Mary Oliver

There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.

You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.

Today I am altogether without ambition. Where did I get such wisdom?

At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all.

Wasn't it Emerson who said, 'My life is for itself and not for a spectacle'? I have a happy, full, good life because I hold it private.

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?

Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they're thirsty. That's prayer. They don't live an unconscious life, they simply have no language to talk about these things. But they are grateful for the good things that come along.

One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.

I know the sag of the unfinished poem. And I know the release of the poem that is finished.

To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.

Is there anything more loyal than the sun?

"Someone I loved once gave me a box of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift"

I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all.

My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

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

Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious.

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

I simply do not distinguish between work and play.

My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work.

I went to India and was quite taken with it. There's a feeling there that things are holy first and useful second.

I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.

I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us.

My work is loving the world.

I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know, whoever I was, I was alive for a little while.