Sharon Olds Quotes

Quotes about:

Age Daughters Writing

I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky.

Sharon Olds

Writing, Poetry, Lucky

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Poets are like steam valves, where the ordinary feelings of ordinary people can escape and be shown.

Sharon Olds

People, Feelings, Ordinary

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I have learned to get pleasure from speaking of pain

Sharon Olds

Pain, Pleasure, I Have Learned

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Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up.

Sharon Olds

Lying, Writing, Self

"Get Over an Ex: Advice for After the Breakup" by Sharon Olds, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 5, 2012.

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I'm not asking a poem to carry a lot of rocks in its pockets. Just being an ordinary observer and liver and feeler and letting the experience get through you onto the notebook with the pen, through the arm, out of the body, onto the page, without distortion.

Sharon Olds

Notebook, Rocks, Pockets

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.. to a poet, the human community is like the community of birds to a bird, singing to each other. Love is one of the reasons we are singing to one another, love of language itself, love of sound, love of singing itself, and love of the other birds.

Sharon Olds

Love Is, Community, Bird

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I did not know him, I knew my idea of him.

Sharon Olds

Ideas, Knows

Sharon Olds (2012). “Stag's Leap”, p.74, Random House

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The older I get, the more I see the power of that young woman, my mother.

Sharon Olds

Birthday, Mom, Daughter

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There is something in me maybe someday to be written; now it is folded, and folded, and folded, like a note in school.

Sharon Olds

School, Someday, Notes

Sharon Olds, “A Week Later”

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Poems come from ordinary experiences and objects, I think. Out of memory - a dress I lent my daughter on her way back to college; a newspaper photograph of war; a breast self-exam; the tooth fairy; Calvinist parents who beat up their children; a gesture of love; seeing oneself naked over age 50 in a set of bright hotel bathroom mirrors.

Sharon Olds

Daughter, Children, Memories

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Take your vitamins. Exercise. Just work to love yourself as much as you can - not more than the people around you but not so much less.

Sharon Olds

Love You, Exercise, People

"Advice to Young Poets: Sharon Olds in Conversation". Interview with Michael Laskey, www.poets.org. May 12, 2010.

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I did not deceive him, he did not deceive me, I did not leave him, he did not leave me, I freed him, he freed me.

Sharon Olds

Deceiving, Leaving Me

Sharon Olds (2012). “Stag's Leap”, p.89, Random House

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Once you lose someone it is never exactly the same person who comes back.

Sharon Olds

Sad Relationship, Persons, Loses

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Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel as if the world is not going to blow up.

Sharon Olds

Baseball, Blow, World

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The older I get, the more I feel.

Sharon Olds

Daughter, Natural Talent, Getting Older

"Trauma Units" by Stephen Burt, www.nytimes.com. December 15, 2002.

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Maybe in order to understand sex fully/one has to risk being destroyed by it.

Sharon Olds

Sex, Order, Risk

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My poems - I don't even like the sound of that, in a way. Not that anyone else wrote them. But we know that only people who are really close to us care about our personal experience.

Sharon Olds

People, Sound, Care

Interview with Dwight Garner for Salon Magazine, www.english.illinois.edu. July 1, 1996.

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We're all taking on too much, we're all asking too much of ourselves. We're all wishing we could do more, and therefore just doing more.

Sharon Olds

Wish, Asking, Too Much

Interview with Dwight Garner for Salon Magazine, www.english.illinois.edu. July 1, 1996.

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... sometimes I can feel it, the way we are pouring slowly toward a curve and around it through something dark and soft, and we are bound to each other.

Sharon Olds

Dark, Curves, Pouring

Sharon Olds, “The Sash”

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When anyone escapes, my heart / leaps up. Even when it's I who am escaped from, / I am half on the side of the leaver.

Sharon Olds

Heart, Half, Sides

"Pulitzer Prize-Winner Sharon Olds Talks Poetry, Divorce" By Brittany Wong, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 17, 2013.

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Seeing yourself as responsible for the quality of your relationship, as a prime mover in your life, I think is a bold, amazing step.

Sharon Olds

Thinking, Quality, Steps

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it is forbidden to love where we are not loved

Sharon Olds

Forbidden

Malika Booker, Sharon Olds, Warsan Shire (2017). “Penguin Modern Poets 3: Your Family, Your Body”, p.71, Penguin UK

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Because a poem is not written while running or while answering the phone. It's written in whatever minutes one has. Sometimes you have half an hour.

Sharon Olds

Running, Phones, Answering The Phone

Interview with Dwight Garner for Salon Magazine, www.english.illinois.edu. July 1, 1996.

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I wish I wrote more about the world at more distance from myself.

Sharon Olds

Distance, Wish, World

Interview with Dwight Garner for Salon Magazine, www.english.illinois.edu. July 1, 1996.

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I didn't have time to sit down and look at the work of a year and choose what to type.

Sharon Olds

Years, Looks, Down And

Interview with Dwight Garner for Salon Magazine, www.english.illinois.edu. July 1, 1996.

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Born: November 19, 1942
Occupation: Poet
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