Mary Oliver Quotes

I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force.

Mary Oliver

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Quotes to Explore

• When I was twelve, I started reading Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, and - do we dare breathe the name - William Faulkner.

  

  Frances Mayes
  • Reading
  • Name
  • Breathe

• When I write, I feel that I'm writing with my intellect. When I paint, I think it's some other force making me paint. I - as I wrote in my novel 'My Name is Red' - watch with amazement what my hand is doing on the paper, what kind of line, what kind of strange, beautiful thing it's doing in spite of my will, so to speak.

  

  Orhan Pamuk
  • Writing
  • Beautiful
  • Hand

• You see, I was never a big fan of contemporary movies because they always make actresses and actors look too perfect.

  

  Kate Winslet
  • Perfect
  • Movies
  • Look

• Animation is tremendously resilient. Animation will recover, as art always recovers. There's always cycles of good art.

  

  Ralph Bakshi
  • Good
  • Art
  • Always

• I'm very curious to know what it's like, death - I always say to my wife, 'I wonder if we'll have the 'New York Times' when we're dead.'

  

  R. J. Cutler
  • Death
  • Wife
  • Wonder

• When people start writing there is this idea that you have to get everything right first time, every sentence has to be perfect, every paragraph has to be perfect, every chapter has to be perfect, but what you're doing is not any kind of public show, until you're ready for it.

  

  Irvine Welsh
  • People
  • Time
  • Writing

• The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

  

  T. S. Eliot
  • Work
  • First
  • Last

• We are political animals, as, not without reason, affirmed Aristotle, who perhaps influenced humanity's thinking more than any other ancient philosopher through his almost 200 treatises, according to reports, of which only 31 have been preserved.

  

  Fidel Castro
  • Thinking
  • Political
  • Humanity

• Ziggy Marley is the third generation of Marleys I know. I knew his grandmother and his dad - I did a children's album with his grandmother. They're like family.

  

  Henry Saint Clair Fredericks
  • Children
  • Family
  • Dad

• I love to eat cucumber sticks with yogurt. It's a great snack to have at home, especially when I'm having house guests.

  

  Gabriela Isler
  • Great
  • Love
  • Home

• There has been a major shift in how we live in our homes. Everyone knows the kitchen is the soul of the house. It's more of an open-concept approach.

  

  Candice Olson
  • Live
  • Soul
  • House

• If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

  

  Wayne Dyer
  • You
  • Slave
  • Obligation

• People have to start realizing that money is just a fiction, an idea.

  

  Cameron Winklevoss
  • People
  • Money
  • Start

• The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.

  

  Hal Borland
  • Time
  • Faith
  • Universe

• The Israeli media are very important to me. I've been part of them and they a part of me all my adult life.

  

  Yair Lapid
  • Life
  • Important
  • Media

• I have two very cogent reasons for not printing any list of subscribers; - one, that I have lost all the names, - the other, that I have spent all the money.

  

  Samuel Johnson
  • Money
  • Lost

• But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay, I’m junk but I’m still holding up this little wild bouquet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

  

  Leonard Cohen
  • Up
  • Time
  • Democracy

• John Parsons: Don’t you think such a theory, such a radical theory, is anti-social?

  

  Margaret Sanger

• I've tried every kind of bottled water, but Poland Spring is my go-to. I always have room-temperature bottles of it on side of stage for post-performance.

  

  Karim Kharbouch
  • Water
  • Spring

• I have this eerie feeling that by the time I'm 33, reality will not exist in the same plane as it did before. It's cool but also a little creepy.

  

  Alan Palomo
  • Reality
  • Feeling
  • Exist

• As a New Yorker, or wherever I am, I just want to know I can get our of the house in five minutes if I have to and not have to spend a bunch of time obsessing in the mirror, trying on a million different options. Now, I just know what works.

  

  Natasha Lyonne
  • House
  • Options
  • New Yorker

• I learned five chords; I thought I knew it all.

  

  Dave Davies The Kinks

• Since the world has existed, there has been injustice. But it is one world, the more so as it becomes smaller, more accessible. There is just no question that there is more obligation that those who have should give to those who have nothing.

  

  Audrey Hepburn
  • Question
  • Injustice
  • Obligation

• I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force.

  

  Mary Oliver