Feel Quotes

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Mary Oliver

American

September 10, 1935

Poet

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I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all.

Tags: Up Much Too

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

Tags: Than Would Any

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

Tags: Family Out Very

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.

Tags: Poetry You Out

I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social workshop gathering. My school was the great poets: I read, and I read, and I read.

Tags: Great Than Feel

To tell you the truth, I believe everything - tigers, trees, stones - are sentient in one way or another. You'd never catch me idly kicking a stone, for example.

Tags: Truth You Me

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.

Tags: Work People Up

The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they're full of bicycle trails.

Tags: Most Young Child

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.

Tags: Morning You Think

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.

Tags: Morning You Think