"So, it comes first: the world. Then, literature. And then, what one pencil moving over a thousand miles of paper can (perhaps, sometimes) do."


– Mary Oliver, Blue Pastures

"I did not think of language as the means to self-description. I thought of it as the door— a thousand opening doors!—past myself. I thought of it as the means to notice, to contemplate, to praise, and thus, to come into power."


– Mary Oliver, Blue Pastures

"In books: truth, and daring, passion of all sorts. Clear and sweet and savory emotion did not run in a rippling stream in my personal world—more pity to it! But in stories and poems I found passion unfettered, and healthy."


– Mary Oliver, Blue Pastures