Mary Oliver Quotes
I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
Quotes to Explore
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Of course, giving is deeply emotional. But supplementing emotion with research makes it more likely that a gift can have a bigger impact. It's like any investment. After all, you wouldn't put funds into stocks or bonds without understanding the potential return. Why wouldn't you do the same when investing in society?
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I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.
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I know how to make a record that commercial radio or Triple J will smash now... It's kind of hard to stay true and write what you would write if you didn't have that in your head. Because I know I can get way more airplay and get this much bigger... and that's what I'm trying to avoid doing. Trying to avoid the poisons of success.
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Politicians are trying to attract people to issues.
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I was going to try to get into the creative writing program at Berkeley; it's just that the acting thing worked out.
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Writing for the theater, you find yourself living a nocturnal life.
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One of the biggest mistakes people make when they cook for other people is to think that it has to be fancy and elaborate. This results in enormous expense and nine days of labor, plus you end up trying to assemble a croquembouche in front of your guests and everyone's experiencing flop sweat.
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Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own.
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To be honest, I've made a game out of trying to live through my James Dean, Janis Joplin, Freddie Prinze, Jim Morrison period, those demons that we all have that we're either successful or not at making work for us rather than destroy us.
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When I'm writing, I spend all my time in The Grocer on Elgin buying ready-made meals; I think they are the only reason my husband and kids haven't left me.
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There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.
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If you know your characters well enough, you aren't trying to grasp for storylines. You're really thinking about their flaws and their passions and what they're chasing.
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I think I didn't know whether I wanted to keep acting deep into my career. I kept trying to see if I would be able to do it well enough to make that part of my destiny or part of what I was supposed to do.
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Only children are weird. The only children I know, including myself, are either superweird or very talented and special or a mix of the two. I think there was always a certain independence and loneliness - I had a lot of imaginary friends as a kid.
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Giving is an expression of gratitude for our blessings.
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I was already writing 'The Lost Symbol' when I started to realize 'The Da Vinci Code' would be big. The thing that happened to me and must happen to any writer who's had success is that I temporarily became very self-aware.
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Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.
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Do me a favor - right now, today, start a list of all your crazy obsessions, the things that get your heart pumping, that wake you up in the middle of the night. Put it above your desk and use it to guide you, to jumpstart your writing each and every day.
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Stephen King once told me he liked my writing. And that was great.
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There is a sense of feeling larger than your own life when you're in some common mission together. You have to hope it's not going to take a war to bring that back to America again. I think another time when it seemed to be here was in the early 1960s.
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Success is very intoxicating. It is very difficult to handle all the fame and adulation. It corrupts you. You start to believe that everybody around you is in awe of you, that everybody wants you, and that everybody is thinking of you all the time.
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From birth to death, anyone can fish. I just think it's fantastic to see old people going fishing with young people and teaching them things. I'm very, very critical.
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I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings.
