"Writers must... take care of the sensibility..." - Quote by Mary Oliver

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

“Believe me, if anybody has a job and starts at 9, there's no reason why they can't get up at 4:30 or five and write for a couple of hours, and give their employers their second-best effort of the day - which is what I did.”

“I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us.”

“I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.”

“I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast - talk them or write them down.”

“If you do weave one-liners into a story, you have to have an overall story as well, otherwise it doesn't really count as narrative.”

“Women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time.”

“The finest poems of the world have been expedients to get bread.”

“No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?”