"... to write well it is entirely..." - Quote by Mary Oliver
... to write well it is entirely necessary to read widely and deeply. Good poems are the best teachers.
More by Mary Oliver
“I believe art is utterly important. It is one of the things that could save us. We don't have to rely totally on experience if we can do things in our imagination.... It's the only way in which you can live more lives than your own. You can escape your own time, your own sensibility, your own narrowness of vision.”
“I got saved by poetry. And I got saved by the beauty of the world.”
“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.”
More on Writing
“I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity.”
“It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.”
“Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money.”
More on Reading
“A breeze discovered my open book And began to flutter the leaves to look”
“When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.”
“A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.”