Mary Oliver Quotations

You have to be in the world to understand what the spiritual is about, and you have to be spiritual in order to truly be able to accept what the world is about.

I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.

Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.

Poetry is one of the original arts, and it began, as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.

... the natural world is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores.

In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.

A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.

But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible.

Like Magellan, let us find our islands To die in, far from home, from anywhere Familiar. Let us risk the wildest places, Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.