Mary Oliver

When the blackberries hang swollen in the woods, in the brambles nobody owns, I spend all day among the high branches, reaching my ripped arms, thinking of nothing, cramming the black honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts what it is. In the dark creeks that run by there is this thick paw of my life darting among the black bells, the leaves; there is this happy tongue.

You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn't need any more of that sound.

The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.

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

I climb, I backtrack. I float. I ramble my way home.

Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree... Of course I have to give up, but by then I'm half crazy with the wonder of it--the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.

The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. I don't say this without reckoning in the sorrow, the worry, the many diminishments. But surely it is then that a person's character shines or glooms.

I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it.

And over one more set of hills, along the sea, the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness and are giving it back to the world. If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness.

I always feel that whatever isn't necessary shouldn't be in a poem.

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?

I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things.

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.

Things take the time they take. Don't worry.

If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.

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

Every day I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

I like books that are fat and full.

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.

Sometimes breaking the rules is extending the rules.