Mary Oliver – 7 Quotes

7 Quotes by Mary Oliver

I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.

– Mary Oliver

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

– Mary Oliver

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading, walking around the woods in Ohio, where I grew up.

– Mary Oliver

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

– Mary Oliver

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 gone.

– Mary Oliver

Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket you put your life into it and make something out of that.

– Mary Oliver

I simply do not distinguish between work and play.

– Mary Oliver