He was, of course, a piece of the sky. His eyes said so. This is not a face; this is the other part of knowing something, when there is no proof, but neither is there any way toward disbelief. Imagine lifting the lid from a jar and finding it filled not with darkness but with light. Bird was like that. Startling, elegant, alive.

— Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver Quotes

Don’t bother me. I’ve just been born.

— Mary Oliver

Admiring is easy, but affinity, that does take some time.

— Mary Oliver

The beauty and strangeness of the world may fill the eyes with its cordial refreshment. Equally it may offer the heart a dish of terror. On one side is radiance; on another is the abyss.

— Mary Oliver

I had believed something probably not true, yet it was wonderful to have believed it.

— Mary Oliver

All things are meltable, and replaceable. Not at this moment, but soon enough, we are lambs and we are leaves, and we are stars and the shining mysterious pond water itself... May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream.

— Mary Oliver

The whole business of what’s reality and what isn’t has never been solved and probably never will be. So I don’t care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty.

— Mary Oliver

How does any of us live in this world? One thing compensates for another, I suppose. Sometimes what’s wrong does not hurt at all, but rather shines like a new moon.

— Mary Oliver

Why do I have so many thoughts, they are driving me crazy. Why am I always going anywhere, instead of somewhere?

— Mary Oliver

Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart – to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.

— Mary Oliver

Dear Bear, it’s no use, the world is like that. So stay where you are, and live long. Someday maybe we’ll wise up and remember what you were: hopeless ambassador of a world that returns now only in poets’ dreams.

— Mary Oliver

I forgive them their unhappiness, I forgive them for walking out of the world. But I don’t forgive them for turning their faces away, for taking off their veils and dancing for death – for hurtling toward oblivion on the sharp blades of their exquisite poems, saying: this is the way.

— Mary Oliver

There was someone I loved who grew old and ill. One by one I watched the fires go out. There was nothing I could do except to remember that we receive then we give back.

— Mary Oliver

Memory: a golden bowl, or a basement without light. For which reason the nightmare comes with its painful story and says: you need to know this. Some memories I would give anything to forget. Others I would not give up upon the point of death, they are the bright hawks of my life.

— Mary Oliver

Come with me to visit the sunflowers, they are shy but want to be friends;.

— Mary Oliver

This is the lesson of age – events pass, things change, trauma fades, good fortune rises, fades, rises again but different.

— Mary Oliver

Let me always be who I am, and then some.

— Mary Oliver

Stepping out into the world, into the grass, onto the path, was always a kind of relief. I was not escaping anything. I was returning to the arena of delight.

— Mary Oliver

If this was lost, let us all be lost always.

— Mary Oliver

How perfect to be aboard a ship with maybe a hundred years still in my pocket, but it’s late for all of us. And in truth, the only ship there is, is the ship we are all on, burning the world as we go.

— Mary Oliver

For me it was important to be alone; solitude was a prerequisite to being openly and joyfully susceptible and responsive to the world of leaves, light, birdsong, flowers, flowing water.

— Mary Oliver
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