Mary Oliver

Quotes

• “When it's over, I want to say: all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.I was the bridegroom, taking the world into...”
• “Sometimes I dreamthat everything in the world is here, in my room, in a great closet, named and orderly,and I am here to...”
• “To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowin...”
• “I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own f...”
• “Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a lit...”
• “the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own”
• “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
• “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
• “It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.”
• “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
• “Poetry is a life-cherishing force.”
• “I know many lives worth living.”