653 Quotes by Mary Oliver

Because of the dog’s joyfulness, our own is increased... what would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another – why don’t you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

One learns thinking about writing, and by talking about writing – but primarily through writing.

And now you’ll be telling stories of my coming back and they won’t be false, and they won’t be true but they’ll be real.

My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It’s early work, derivative work.

And whoever thinks these are worthy, breathy words I am writing down is kind. Writing is neither vibrant life nor docile artifact but a text that would put all its money on the hope of suggestion. Come with me into the field of sunflowers is a better line than anything you will find here, and the sunflowers themselves far more wonderful than any words about them.

ON THE BEACH On the beach, at dawn: four small stones clearly hugging each other. How many kinds of love might there be in the world, and how many formations might they make and who am I ever to imagine I could know such a marvelous business? When the sun broke it poured willingly its light over the stones that did not move, not at all, just as, to its always generous term, it shed its light on me, my own body that loves, equally, to hug another body.

Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving, which is the way I walked on, softly, through the pale-pink morning light.

Are the roses not also – even as the owl is – excessive? Each flower is small and lovely, but in their sheer and silent abundance the roses become an immutable force, as though the work of the wild roses was to make sure that all of us, who come wandering over the sand, may be, for a while, struck to the heart and saturated with a simple joy.