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

#amazement #arms #bride #i #into

I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#get #i #interested #interesting #job

I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#consider #get #i #just #kind

I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#begins #duty #feelings #i #i love

In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#four #how #learn #much #spend

So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#how #inward #outwards #pray #swim

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#accommodate #edges #give #group #most

Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#am #anything #even #i #i am

As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#any #captivated #child #material #me

I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write. ↗

— Mary Oliver

#begin #does #few #finally #get