"Poetry is a river; many voices travel..." - Quote by Mary Oliver

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

“My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work.”

“Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When it does, it grows sweeter.”

“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.”

“A poem, a sentence, causes us to see ourselves. I be, and I see my being, at the same time.”

“The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. [...] The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain.”

“Make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repaid, but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you.”

“To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art does not live in the present, it must not be considered at all.”

“Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.”