Mary Oliver (born September 10, 1935) is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, [America's] best-selling poet". Read full biography of Mary Oliver →
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on... →
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.
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... →
There were times over the years when life was not easy, but if you're working a few hours a day and you've got a good book to read, and you... →
I have a notion that if you are going to be spiritually curious, you better not get cluttered up with too many material things.
So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray.
We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy.
I simply do not distinguish between work and play.
Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a... →
I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded.
Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.
Mary Oliver (born September 10, 1935) is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, [America's] best-selling poet".