Mary Oliver Quotes

For me, there is nothing worse than the knowledge that my life holds nothing for me but being a writer.

It's hard to imagine my life not writing. I love it.

I've been writing my entire life, and I'll always write.

I was a writer before 'Eat, Pray, Love,' and I'll be a writer after it's over. It's what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I didn't do any writing seriously until I was in my mid-twenties. But I've never really thought of myself as doing anything else. I've always wanted to write.

While I think storytelling is a meaningful way to spend your life... it does feel a little bit secondary or off-point.

I'm not one of those true writers who can't bear not to be writing. Yet it's one of the most important things in my life.

Writing is as big a part of my career as acting is, financially and time wise. So, yeah, I love it. That's all I wanted to do since I was young was be a writer. So that and acting are the two most important aspects of my career.

I'm a writer; it's not just what I do, but who I am.

More than anything, that's been the thread through my life - the desire to write, the impulse to write. I mean, it's taken me other places, but it was the impulse to write that led me to singing.

Writing wasn't about making money. I wanted to find fulfillment in writing and telling stories, and that's what's driven me.

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

I've always loved writing. It was always what I wanted to do.

Sometime early in life, I developed the notion - one which I have never relinquished - that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.

I write because I love doing it.

I feel devoutly thankful to have been born fond of writing.

Real writers write because they love to write. They don't write for public acclaim.

When I was 17 or 18 and it was time to figure out what to do with my life, I realized that I didn't enjoy anything as much as I enjoyed playing music. I felt that I had no choice: that I had to become a musician.

We don't choose the books we write; they choose us.

When I read Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros as a freshman at Rutgers, it all clicked - that writing was all I wanted to do. It became my calling.

I'm always fascinated by why a person becomes a writer.

This is what I've always wanted to do ever since I was a little girl. Coming from dance and theater and what was accessible to me in my hometown, it was all I did after school and on the weekends. The idea of making my hobby into my job was the ultimate quest.

I always wanted to write, ever since I was a kid. I started writing at the age of 11. All I wanted to do was finish my education and have my nights free for writing.

As long as I'm writing stuff and people are reading it, I'll be happy.

I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry.