"I grew up in a sad, depressed..." - Quote by Mary Oliver
I grew up in a sad, depressed place. I got out. Poetry saved my life.
More by Mary Oliver
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
“Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.”
“The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too, and so, no doubt, can you, and you.”
More on Poetry
“Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity.”
“I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it.”
“Not by wisdom do they [poets] make what they compose, but by a gift of nature and an inspiration similar to that of the diviners and the oracles.”
More on Healing
“Words can break someone into a million pieces, but they can also put them back together”
“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it ... what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.”
“There is no future without forgiveness”