Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliveris an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth10 September 1935
CityMaple Heights, OH
CountryUnited States of America
beautiful sea faces
The sea is the most beautiful face in our universe.
change world looks
It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over...
inspirational sweet soul
Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.
dance dancing long
As long as you're dancing, you can break the rules.
powerful writing doe
Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When it does, it grows sweeter.
flower sisterhood thinking
When death comes…. I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what it’s going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body as a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. [from the poem "When Death Comes"]
play knowing touching
Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving
beach book years
There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you can go outside to the beach and dig for clams, you're okay.
loss years rivers
Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation
nature stars voice
The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own.
responsibility long world
A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
play work-and-play
I simply do not distinguish between work and play.
uprising people creative
The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.
inspirational life real
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. When it is over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.