Mary Oliver Quotes

Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

I read my books with diligence, and mounting skill, and gathering certainty. I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life.

It is better for the heart to break, than not to break.

Over and over in the butterfly we see the idea of transcendence. In the forest we see not the inert but the aspiring. In water that departs forever and forever returns, we experience eternity.

I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

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

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

When it’s 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.

You too can be carved anew by the details of your devotion.

Where has this cold come from?
“It comes from the death of your friend.”

Will I always, from now on, be this cold?
“No, it will diminish. But always it will be with you.”

What is the reason for it?
“Wasn’t your friendship always as beautiful as a flame?

GOING TO WALDEN
It isn't very far as highways lie.
I might be back by nightfall, having seen
The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.
Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.
They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:
How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!
Many have gone, and think me half a fool
To miss a day away in the cool country.
Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,
Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

quickly found for myself two such blessings — the natural world, and the world of writing: literature. These were the gates through which I vanished from a difficult place.

Percy wakes me (fourteen)

Percy wakes me and I am not ready.
He has slept all night under the covers.
Now he’s eager for action: a walk, then breakfast.
So I hasten up. He is sitting on the kitchen counter
Where he is not supposed to be.
How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you
Needed me,
To wake me.
He thought he would a lecture and deeply
His eyes begin to shine.
He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.
He squirms and squeals: he has done something
That he needed
And now he hears that it is okay.
I scratch his ears. I turn him over
And touch him everywhere. He is
Wild with the okayness of it. Then we walk, then
He has breakfast, and he is happy.
This is a poem about Percy.
This is a poem about more than Percy.
Think about it.

I woke
And crept
Like a cat

On silent feet
About my own house-
To look

At you
While you were sleeping,
Your hair

Sprayed on the pillow,
Your eyes
Closed,

Your body
Safe and solitary,
And my doors

Shut for your safety
And your comfort.
I did this

Thinking I was intruding
Yet wanting to see
The most beautiful thing

That has ever been in my house.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.