It is better for the heart to break, than not to break. - Mary Oliver
It's not a competition, it's a doorway. - Mary Oliver
Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world. - Mary Oliver
A carpenter is hired- a roof repaired, a porch built. Everything that can be fixed. June, July, August. Everyday we hear their laughter. I think of the painting by van Gogh, the man in the chair. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go. His hands over his eyes. - Mary Oliver
"Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness. - Mary Oliver
That God had a plan, I do not doubt.But what if His plan was, that we would do better? - Mary Oliver
I feel the terror of idleness,like a red thirst.Death isn't just an idea. - Mary Oliver
I know many lives worth living. - Mary Oliver
After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world. - Mary Oliver
the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own - Mary Oliver
Poetry is a life-cherishing force. - Mary Oliver
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift. - Mary Oliver
To interrupt the writer from the line of thought is to wake the dreamer from the dream. The dreamer cannot enter that dream, precisely as it was unfolding, ever again. - Mary Oliver
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. - Mary Oliver
Language is rich, and malleable. It is a living, vibrant material, and every part of a poem works in conjunction with every other part - the content, the place, the diction, the rhythm, the tone-as well as the very sliding, floating, thumping, rapping sounds of it. - Mary Oliver
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. - Mary Oliver
Things take the time they take.Don't worry.How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine? - Mary Oliver
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? - Mary Oliver