"For poems are not words, after all,..." - Quote by Mary Oliver
For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
More by Mary Oliver
“I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.”
“Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.”
“I learned to build bookshelves and brought books to my room, gathering them around me thickly. I read by day and into the night. I thought about perfectibility, and deism, and adjectives, and clouds, and the foxes, I locked my door, from the inside, and leaped from the roof and went to the woods, by day or darkness.”
More on Poetry
“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.”
“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.”
“What has praise and fame to do with poetry? Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice? So that all this chatter and praise, and blame and meeting people who admired one and meeting people who did not admire one was as ill suited as could be to the thing itself- a voice answering a voice.”
More on Purpose
“My idea is to give hope, because where there is no hope, there is no vision, and where there is no vision, people will perish.”
“I believe that the best way to prepare for a Future Life is to be kind, live one day at a time, and do the work you can do best, doing it as well as you can.”
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”