Mary Oliver

"Look, hasn't my body already felt like the body of a flower?"

"Athletes take care of their bodies. Writers must similarly take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. There is nourishment in books, other art, history, philosophies—in holiness and in mirth. It is in honest hands-on labor also; I don't mean to indicatea preference for the scholarly life. And it is in the green world—among people, and animals, and trees for that matter, if one genuinely cares about trees."

"To interrupt the writer from the line of thought is to wake the dreamer from the dream. The dreamer cannot enter that dream, precisely as it was unfolding, ever again."

"It's not a competition, it's a doorway."

"Language is rich, and malleable. It is a living, vibrant material, and every part of a poem works in conjunction with every other part - the content, the place, the diction, the rhythm, the tone-as well as the very sliding, floating, thumping, rapping sounds of it."

"After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world."

"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"

"Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."

"I believe you did not have a happy life. I believe you were cheated. I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery. I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression. I believe joy was a game you could never play without stumbling. I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger. I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all. I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your bitterness. I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser and unassuaged. Oh, cold and dreamless under the wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful flowers of the hillsides."

"“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –over and over announcing your placein the family of things.”"

"“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”"

"The Fourth Sign of The Zodiac (Part 3) by Mary Oliver I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching. You could live a hundred years, it’s happened. Or not. I am speaking from the fortunate platformof many years,none of which, I think, I ever wasted. Do you need a prod?Do you need a little darkness to get you going?Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,and remind you of Keats,so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,he had a lifetime. Mary oliver"

"That time I thought I could notgo any closer to griefwithout dying I went closer,and I did not die. Surely Godhad his hand in this,as well as friends. Still, I was bent,and my laughter,as the poet said,was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel,(brave even among lions),“It’s not the weight you carrybut how you carry it -books, bricks, grief -it’s all in the wayyou embrace it, balance it, carry itwhen you cannot, and would not,put it down.”So I went practicing. Have you noticed?Have you heardthe laughterthat comes, now and again,out of my startled mouth?How I lingerto admire, admire, admirethe things of this worldthat are kind, and maybealso troubled -roses in the wind,the sea geese on the steep waves,a loveto which there is no reply?"

"A carpenter is hired- a roof repaired, a porch built. Everything that can be fixed. June, July, August. Everyday we hear their laughter. I think of the painting by van Gogh, the man in the chair. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go. His hands over his eyes."

"Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –over and over announcing your placein the family of things."

"There are things you can’t reach. But You can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god. And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier. I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around As though with your arms open."

"Things take the time they take. Don't worry. How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?"

"Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."

"I went down not long agoto the Mad River, under the willows I knelt and drank from that crumpled flow, call itwhat madness you will, there's a sicknessworse than the risk of death and that'sforgetting what we should never forget. Tecumseh lived here. The wounds of the pastare ignored, but hang onlike the litter that snags among the yellow branches,newspapers and plastic bags, after the rains. Where are the Shawnee now?Do you know? Or would you have to write to Washington, and even then,whatever they said,would you believe it? Sometimes I would like to paint my body red and go intothe glittering snowto die. His name meant Shooting Star. From Mad River country north to the borderhe gathered the tribesand armed them one more time. He vowedto keep Ohio and it took himover twenty years to fail. After the bloody and final fighting, at Thames,it was over, excepthis body could not be found,and you can do whatever you want with that, sayhis people came in the black leaves of the nightand hauled him to a secret grave, or thathe turned into a little boy again, and leapedinto a birch canoe and wentrowing home down the rivers. Anywaythis much I'm sure of: if we meet him, we'll know it,he will still beso angry."

"Dogfish I wanted The past to go away, I wanted To leave it, like another country; I wanted My life to close, and open Like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song Where it falls Down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted To hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,Whoever I was, I was Alive For a little while.…mostly, I want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind,Or mean,For a simple reason. And nobody gets out of it, having to Swim through the fires to stay in This world."