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"I stood like Adam in his lonely gardenOn that first morning, shaken out of sleep,Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift."
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Exlpore more Observation quotes
"I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime."
"All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives - all that was over."
"I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it."
"You would be much amused with the animals round the ranch."
"In fact it was altogether an odd dog, of uncertain breed, or breeds. It was large and black, but its hair was tufty, its body scrawny and clumsy, and its manner edgy, anxious, verging on the completely neurotic. Whenever it came to a halt for a moment or so, the business of starting up again often seemed to cause it trouble, as if it had difficulty in remembering where it had left each of its legs."
"The bowl is warmer than the soup."
"Taking a deep breath, I shake my head and find Judge staring at me. "Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans," I say. "Once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers."
"Arcadio had seen her many times working in her parents' small food store but he had never taken a good look at her because she had that rare virtue of never existing completely except at the opportune moment."
"Vivi muito tempo no mundo das pessoas grandes. Vi-as de bem perto. Não fiquei com muito melhor opinião delas."
Explore more quotes by Mary Oliver
"I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple - or a green field - a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing - an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness -wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak -to be company. It was everything that was needed, when everything was needed."
"I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country; I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,whoever I was, I wasalive for a little while."
"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 well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?"
"I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and as you read you keep feeling it and though it be my story it will be common, though it be singular it will be known to you so that by the end you will think-no, you will realize-that it was all the while yourself arranging the words, that it was all the time words that you yourself, out of your heart had been saying."
"Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth."
"Be prepared. A dog is adorable and noble.A dog is a true and loving friend. A dogis also a hedonist."
"I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it."
"The sweetness of dogs (fifteen) What do you say, Percy? I am thinkingof sitting out on the sand to watchthe moon rise. Full tonight.So we goand the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me shudder, makes me think abouttime and space, makes me takemeasure of myself: one iotapondering heaven. Thus we sit,I thinking how grateful I am for the moon's perfect beauty and also, oh! How richit is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile, leans against me and gazes up intomy face. As though I werehis perfect moon."
"Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together."
"Love, love, love, says Percy.And hurry as fast as you canalong the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.Then, go to sleep.Give up your body heat, your beating heart.Then, trust."
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