Mary Oliver

Quotations

  • “I simply do not distinguish between work and play.” -Mary Oliver

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  • “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

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  • “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

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  • “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

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  • “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. I can’t wait until morning – it’ll be gone.” -Mary Oliver

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  • “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

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  • “We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading, walking around the woods in Ohio, where I grew up.” -Mary…

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  • “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

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  • I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded. – Mary Oliver

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