653 Quotes by Mary Oliver

... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.

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.

We do not love anything more deeply than we love a story...

I would say that there exists a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves-we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together, we are each other's destiny.

Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents.

A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.

There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true for they are in another world altogether.

You never know / What opportunity / Is going to travel to you, / Or through you.

When it's over I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real....