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"If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer."
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Exlpore more Work quotes
"The purpose of work is to labor and invest time in your gift."
"Bolts work on nuts; pens work on paper. But you must work on yourself. Go, get working!"
"And uh, I'm glad that I still have my hands and my eyes to work with."
"When I work, I work very hard. So I look to work with people who have that level of dedication. And I depend on that from everyone. From the director to my crews that I work with."
"I've got a very nice staff here. People with patience, you know, and good temper, and not too brainy, because if you have people who are brainy, they are bound to be very impatient."
Explore more quotes by Mary Oliver
"Language is rich, and malleable. It is a living, vibrant material, and every part of a poem works in conjunction with every other part - the content, the place, the diction, the rhythm, the tone-as well as the very sliding, floating, thumping, rapping sounds of it."
"You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without doubt,I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me."
"Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth."
"A carpenter is hired- a roof repaired, a porch built. Everything that can be fixed. June, July, August. Everyday 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."
"I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple."
"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."
"To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go."
"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."
"Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."
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