Mary Oliver: Quotes about life

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”

“Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.”

“I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.”

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.

--from WHEN DEATH COMES”

“So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

And live
your life.”

“Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”

“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled — to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.”

“… there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

“Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?”

“Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.”

“And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.”

“Drive down any road,

take a train or an airplane
across the world, leave
your old life behind,

die and be born again~
wherever you arrive
they'll be there first,

glossy and rowdy
and indistinguishable.
The deep muscle of the world.”

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force.”

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes indeed.”