Mary Oliver

"I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation."

"I very much wished not to be noticed, and to be left alone, and I sort of succeeded."

"Instead of taking the reader by the hand and running him down the hill, I want to lead him into a house of many rooms, and leave him alone in each of them."

"It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone."

"One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear."

"People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work."

"Poetry is meant to be heard."

"Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth."

"Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that."

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

"There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty."

"To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go."

"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."

"When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms."