Dream Work Quotes

“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 was

alive
for a little while.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“Landscape

Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“Wild Geese"

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“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 was

alive
for a little while.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things,
I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever

from, One or Two Things”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is –

so it enters us –
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
"Don't love you life
too much," it said,

and vanished
into the world.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“and anyway it’s just the same old story --
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“I believed in the world.
Oh, I wanted

to be easy
in the peopled kingdoms,
to take my place there,
but there was none

that I could find
shaped like me.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“what I wanted
was to be willing
to be afraid”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“Whatever power of the earth rampages, we turn to it dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever the name of the catastrophe, it is never          the opposite of love.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“You can
die for it -
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“And probably, if they don’t waste time looking for an easier world, they can do it.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“What good does it do
to lie all day in the sun
loving what's easy?
It never grew easy,
but at least I grew peaceful:”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors to my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“How does any of us live in this world? One thing compensates for another, I suppose. Sometimes what’s wrong does not hurt at all, but rather shines like a new moon.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“I began to pick through the red rivers
of confusion;

I began to take apart
the deep stitches
of nightmares.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“If you notice anything, it leads you to notice more and more.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“I wanted to live my life but I didn’t want to do what I had to do to go on,”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“the dark heart of the story that is all the reason for its telling?”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“we are all one family but love ourselves best.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“I forgive them their unhappiness, I forgive them for walking out of the world. But I don’t forgive them for turning their faces away, for taking off their veils and dancing for death — for hurtling toward oblivion on the sharp blades of their exquisite poems, saying: this is the way.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“I know
death is the fascinating snake
under the leaves, sliding
and sliding; I know
the heart loves him too, can’t
turn away, can’t

break the spell. Everything

wants to enter the slow thickness,
aches to be peaceful finally and at any cost.

Wants to be stone.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“whatever the name of the catastrophe, it is
never
the opposite of love.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“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, Dream Work

“Did I actually reach out my arms
toward it, toward paradise falling, like
the fading of the dearest, wildest hope-
the dark heart of the story that is all
the reason for its telling?”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work

“THE FIRE That winter it seemed the city was always burning — night after night the flames leaped, the ladders pitched forward. Scorched but alive, the homeless wailed as they ran for the cold streets. That winter my mind had turned around, shedding, like leaves, its bolts of information — drilling down, through history, toward my motionless heart. Those days I was willing, but frightened. What I mean is, I wanted to live my life but I didn’t want to do what I had to do to go on, which was: to go back. All winter the fires kept burning, the smoke swirled, the flames grew hotter. I began to curse, to stumble and choke. Everything, solemnly, drove me toward it — the crying out, that’s so hard to do. Then over my head the red timbers floated, my feet were slippers of fire, my voice crashed at the truth, my fists smashed at the flames to find the door — wicked and sad, mortal and bearable, it fell open forever as I burned.”
― Mary Oliver, Dream Work