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"I was very careful never to take an interesting job. If you have an interesting job, you get interested in it."
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"As busy as I claim to be, I've still got the greatest job in the world."

"I don't very often think I've done a good job. I don't like the majority of what I do. I shouldn't say I don't like it, but I'm not satisfied with almost everything that I do."
Explore more quotes by Mary Oliver

"I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing."

"My first two books are out of print and, okay, they can sleep there comfortably. It's early work, derivative work."

"When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms."

"I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write."

"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."

"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."

"Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that."

"I worked probably 25 years by myself, just writing and working, not trying to publish much, not giving readings."
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