I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and… almost involuntary in my life. – Mary Oliver
I’m going to die one day. I know it’s coming for me, too. I’ll be a mountain, I’ll be a stone on the beach. I’ll be nourishment. – Mary Oliver
To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. – Mary Oliver
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings. – Mary Oliver
Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that. – Mary Oliver
I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things. – Mary Oliver
Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. – Mary Oliver
I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read. – Mary Oliver
Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together. – Mary Oliver
There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you’re working a few hours a day and you’ve got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you’re okay. – Mary Oliver
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. – Mary Oliver
Words have not only a definition… but also the felt quality of their own kind of sound. – Mary Oliver
I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn’t think of it as a career. I didn’t even think of it as a profession… It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life. – Mary Oliver
I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing. – Mary Oliver
If I’ve done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer. – Mary Oliver
I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write. – Mary Oliver
Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. – Mary Oliver
It’s very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. – Mary Oliver