Kaya > Kaya's Quotes

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
― Mary Oliver

“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.”
― Mary Oliver

“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”
― Mary Oliver

“Hello, sun in my face. Hello you who made the morning and spread it over the fields...Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.”
― Mary Oliver

“I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

“Tell me,
what is it you plan to do
with your one
wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

“Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
― Mary Oliver

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.

--from WHEN DEATH COMES”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.”
― Mary Oliver

“Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.”
― Mary Oliver

“I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.”
― Mary Oliver

“it is a serious thing // just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

“So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

And live
your life.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

“The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
― Mary Oliver

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”
― Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

“Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.”
― Mary Oliver

“Love Sorrow

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

“Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another—why don’t you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.”
― Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

“No, I'd never been to this country
before. No, I didn't know where the roads
would lead me. No, I didn't intend to
turn back.”
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

“Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives.”
― Mary Oliver

“That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying I went closer, and I did not die.”
― Mary Oliver, Thirst

“I walk in the world to love it.”
― Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings

“I don't want to live a small life. Open your eyes ... open your life, open your hands.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

“There is only one question; how to love this world.”
― Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

“that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.”
― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays