West Wind Quotes

“West Wind #2

You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable
pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life
toward it.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind

“Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not together.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind

“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.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind

“Here is an amazement—once I was twenty years old and in every motion of my body there was a delicious ease, and in every motion of the green earth there was a hint of paradise, and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“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, West Wind

“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, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“And, therefore, let the immeasurable come. Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine. Let the wind turn in the trees, and the mystery hidden in dirt swing through the air. How could I look at anything in this world and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart? What should I fear?”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“and if you think thinking is a mild exercise, beware!”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“I believe in death. I believe it is the last wonderful work.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“Above the modest house and the palace—the same darkness. Above the evil man and the just, the same stars.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“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, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

“Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind

“You are young. So you know everything.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind

“There was only this – an idea.”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind

“Believe me these are not just words talking.
This is my life, thinking of the darkness to follow.

— Mary Oliver, from “Sand Dabs, Three,” West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems (Houghton Mifflin, 1997)”
― Mary Oliver, West Wind