A Quote by Mary Oliver
Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride, married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. Instructions for living a life: pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.
Pay attention to your friends; pay attention to that cousin that jumps up on the picnic table at the family reunion and goes a little too 'nutty,' you know what I mean? Pay attention to that aunt that's down in the basement that never comes upstairs. We have to pay attention to our friends, pay attention to your family, and offer a hand.
Art begs you to notice it. Why? Because art is God's way of saying hello. So pay attention to poetry. Pay attention to music. Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and photo exhibits and ballets and plays. Don't let all this go unnoticed. Your world is shouting out to you, revealing something intrinsically glorious about itself. Listen carefully. Love art, the way art loves life.
To discover what you really believe, pay attention to the way you act -- and to what you do when things don't go the way you think they should. Pay attention to what you value. Pay attention to how and on what you spend your time. Your money. And pay attention to the way you eat.
I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.
For me, being an actress, my responsibility is not to pay attention to all the noise around me and to pay attention to the script and the director and protect the character and try to tell her story the best I can.
As the power of governments wanes, corporations become ever more powerful. Sometimes they do things that aren't so good. We should pay attention. Steve Jobs was saying, "Don't pay attention to all that stuff. Pay attention to the product you've got in your hand."
Well, that's what life is - this collection of extraordinarily ordinary moments. We just need to pay attention to them all. Wake up and pay attention to how beautiful it all is.
Sometimes you can't help but pay attention to what is written about you. You are trying not to because it's generally not constructive, it can be very funny, in which case it's fine to pay attention to it if you're going to laugh about it. But if it's going to get you angry then it's a pretty pointless waste of energy, so I try and be selective about what I take an interest in about myself.
According to the Buddha's teaching the beginning of the life-stream of living beings is unthinkable. THe believer in the creation of life by God may be astonished at this reply. But if you were to ask him 'What is the beginning of God?' he would answer without hesitation 'God has no beginning', and he is not astonished at his own reply.
Pay attention to the things that agitate you. It will tell you a lot about yourself.
The Four Rules of Life:
1. Show Up 2. Pay Attention 3.Tell the Truth 4. Don't be upset at the results.
Four Rules For Life Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Don't be attached to the results.
One of the things I write about a bit in my Madam Secretary memoir is on Rwanda, where I was an instructed ambassador at the U.N., and my instructions were to not vote for increased forces there, and I didn't like my instructions. So I got up and called Washington and said, "Change my instructions," and they didn't.
People may not tell you how they feel about you, but they always show you. Pay attention.
Related Authors
Alexander Pope Quotes
English
Poet
Emily Dickinson Quotes
American
Poet
George Herbert Quotes
British
Poet
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes
American
Poet
Homer Quotes
Greek
Poet
Horace Quotes
Roman
Poet
John Milton Quotes
English
Poet
Khalil Gibran Quotes
Lebanese
Poet
Lord Byron Quotes
British
Poet
Maya Angelou Quotes
American
Poet
Oscar Wilde Quotes
Irish
Poet
Ovid Quotes
Roman
Poet
T. S. Eliot Quotes
American
Poet
Walt Whitman Quotes
American
Poet
William Butler Yeats Quotes
Irish
Poet