A carpenter is hired- a roof repaired, a porch built. Everything that can be fixed. June, July, August. Every day, we hear their laughter. I think of the painting by van Gogh, the man in the chair. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go. His hands over his eyes.

— Mary Oliver

After a cruel childhood, one must reinvent oneself. Then reimagine the world.

— Mary Oliver

All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as Too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing

— Mary Oliver

And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old—or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.

— Mary Oliver

And now you'll be telling stories of my coming backhand they won't be false, and they won't be true but they'll be real

— Mary Oliver

And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills, like a million flowers on fire --clearly I'm not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value.-from The Buddha's Last Instruction

— Mary Oliver

Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they're thirsty. That's prayer. They don't live an unconscious life, they simply have no language to talk about these things. But they are grateful for the good things that come along.

— Mary Oliver

Athletes take care of their bodies. Writers must similarly take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. There is nourishment in books, other art, history, philosophies—in holiness and in mirth. It is in honest hands-on labor also; I don't mean to indicate preference for the scholarly life. And it is in the green world—among people, and animals, and trees for that matter, if one genuinely cares about trees.

— Mary Oliver

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

— Mary Oliver

Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born.

— Mary Oliver