Mary Oliver Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I quite like the drama of an encore. I think an encore is for those artists who are inclined to do dramatic gestures, and I certainly would say I am inclined towards them.
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It is hard enough to make a plan for how you are going to spend an evening with somebody else. So to make a plan for how you are going to behave in 25 years seems based on a view of life that is incomprehensible to me.
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I learned at an early age that I was given something special when I was born, and that was the gift of music.
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When I learned that flour pound for pound has as many calories as sugar, and that when eating pasta you're basically eating cake, I was size 23, and my neck was restricting my breathing, and so I got on a microbiotic diet and got myself an exercise bike.
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My grandpa would come in with water and flick it on our faces at 6 A.M. and be like, 'If you don't get up to feed the horses, you don't get to ride them.' We'd get up.
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Even a beautiful piece of work can be overshadowed, destroyed, by something else.
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I feel like I've accomplished everything I could in the dunk contest. It would be hard for me to go back and outdo myself.
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Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
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I went out of my way to try not to be an artist, because I thought I would end up leading a miserable, obscure life. I tried to escape it for as long as I could, until I had to admit at 25 that that was my path.
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To communicate the truths of history is an act of hope for the future.
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I grew up in a very strong, nuclear family. My father was a sportsman. He represented South Africa in a couple of sports, so he was a very positive person and someone who encouraged you to be your best and give your best with everything that you do.
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Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force - that thoughts rule the world.
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You know, no one steered people's careers in those days, I don't think, like they do today.
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If the characters on 'The West Wing' were watching a TV show wherein a character like Trump was leading in the polls, they wouldn't find it believable.
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This race is hotter than a Times Square Rolex.
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Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.
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I'm a huge fan of the Clintons. I love Hillary; I love Bill.
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My life is full of mistakes. They're like pebbles that make a good road.
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Now I was joking, so I hope everybody in Dallas - because I've got a lot of buddies there - I hope they all took it as a joke. But to anybody that didn't, I apologized.
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Emerson writes in his Journal that all men try their hands at poetry, but few know which their poems are. The poets are not those who write poems, but those who know which of the things they write are poems.
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I prefer my prose evocative rather than simply effective, with a bit of poetry to it.
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Any personal crisis - you have to use it to get stronger.
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It's the old Washington fiscal game of Jenga. You try to build as much debt as you can take, as much tax as you can take, until you topple the entire economy.
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Poetry is meant to be heard.
