I did not know him, I knew my idea of him.

- Sharon Olds

I'm not asking a poem to carry a lot of rocks in its pockets. Just being an ordinary observer and liver and feeler and letting the experience get thr…

- Sharon Olds

I have learned to get pleasure from speaking of pain

- Sharon Olds

I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.

- Sharon Olds

Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown.

- Sharon Olds

.. to a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one a…

- Sharon Olds

There is something in me maybe someday to be written; now it is folded, and folded, and folded, like a note in school.

- Sharon Olds

Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on th…

- Sharon Olds

The older I get, the more I see the power of that young woman, my mother.

- Sharon Olds