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 →
I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the... →
It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in... →
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... →
My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work.
People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.
I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it.
If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.
I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful, and... almost involuntary in my life.
In college, you learn how to learn. Four years is not too much time to spend at that.
To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.
Walks work for me. I enter some arena that is neither conscious or unconscious.
There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they... →
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
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".