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 Read Quote
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 the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can’t wait until morning – it’ll be gone. Mary Oliver Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force. Mary Oliver Read Quote
I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read. Mary Oliver Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Believe me, if anybody has a job and starts at 9, there’s no reason why they can’t get up at 4:30 or five and write for a couple of hours, and give their employers their second-best effort of the day – which is what I did. Mary Oliver Read Quote
Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth. Mary Oliver Read Quote
I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it. Mary Oliver Read Quote
My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It’s early work, derivative work. Mary Oliver Read Quote
