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"Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."
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Exlpore more Awareness quotes

"Often the truth is in front of your face, but your eyes and heart are so full of lies that you can't see it."

"Oh, to awake from dreaming!"

"Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound."

"We switch to another language-- not our invented language or the language we've learned from our lives. As we walk further up the mountain, we speak the language of silence. This language gives us time to think and move. We can be here and elsewhere at the same time."

"I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, "A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost," while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head."

"I want to feel what I feel. What's mine. Even if it's not happiness, whatever that means. Because you're all you've got."

"I will never tell another person, "I don't understand you... and why? Because if I say that, it means that I am disabled in a way. The inability to connect to another's perspective is, I believe, a disability."
Explore more quotes by Mary Oliver


"Poetry is a life-cherishing force. 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."


"I have a little dog who likes to nap with me.He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck.He is sweeter than soap.He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace,which can't even bark..."


"But very little of it can do morethan start you on your way to the real, unimaginablydifficult goal of writing memorably. That work is doneslowly and in solitude, and it is as improbable as carryingwater in a sieve."


"The stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own."


"As a child, what captivated me was reading the poems myself and realizing that there was a world without material substance which was nevertheless as alive as any other."


"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift."


"Be prepared. A dog is adorable and noble.A dog is a true and loving friend. A dogis also a hedonist."


"LITTLE DOGS RHAPSODY IN THE NIGHT(PERCY THREE)He puts his cheek against mineand makes small, expressive sounds.And when I'm awake, or awake enoughhe turns upside down, his four pawsin the airand his eyes dark and fervent.Tell me you love me, he says.Tell me again.Could there be a sweeter arrangement?Over and overhe gets to ask it.I get to tell."
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