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.

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

Poetry is a life-cherishing force.

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

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

Apparently, I've been considered a recluse.

You can fool a lot of yourself but you can't fool the soul.

I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force.

People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.

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

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

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.

Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?

Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.

We shake with joy, we shake with grief. _x000D_ What a time they have, these two _x000D_ housed as they are in the same body.

Music: what so many sentences aspire to be.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.

Who knows what will happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

Look, I want to love this world _x000D_ as though it's the last chance I'm ever going to get _x000D_ to be alive _x000D_ and know it.

I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery.

Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone.