Upstream: Selected Essays

by Mary Oliver

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

I believe everything has a soul.

You must not ever stop being whimsical. _______ And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

I am, myself, three selves at least. To begin with, there is the child I was. Certainly I am not that child anymore! Yet, distantly, or sometimes not so distantly, I can hear that child’s voice—I can feel its hope, or its distress. It has not vanished. Powerful, egotistical, insinuating—its presence rises, in memory, or from the steamy river of dreams. It is not gone, not by a long shot. It is with me in the present hour. It will be with me in the grave.