Mary Oliver Quotes

154 Sourced Quotes

But the owls themselves are not hard to find, silent and on the wing, with their ear tufts flat against their heads as they fly and their huge wings alternately gliding and flapping as they maneuver through the trees. Athena's owl of wisdom and Merlin's companion, Archimedes, were screech owls surely, not this bird with the glassy gaze, restless on the bough, nothing but blood on its mind.

Mary Oliver

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? / Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?

Mary Oliver

I learned to build bookshelves and brought books to my room, gathering them around me thickly. I read by day and into the night. I thought about perfectibility, and deism, and adjectives, and clouds, and the foxes, I locked my door, from the inside, and leaped from the roof and went to the woods, by day or darkness.

Mary Oliver

This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness.

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver

Born: September 10, 1935

Died: January 17, 2019 (aged 83)

Bio: Mary Oliver was an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The New York Times described her as "far and away, this country's best-selling poet".

Known for:

New and Selected Poems (1992)
Dog Songs (2013)
Wild Geese: Selected Poems (1993)
A Thousand Mornings (2012)
American Primitive (1983)

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