For two decades, I’ve maintained a list of quotes I like by poets, writers, and thinkers I find interesting. This post is part of that series. All posts in the series are organized alphabetically. Some poets and writers have their own dedicated pages.

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To name ourselves rather than be named / we must first see ourselves … / So long unmirrored in our true selves / we may have forgotten how we look. — Lorraine O’Grady, epigraph for Bluest Nude: Poems, by Ama Codjoe

My poem / is finished and I haven’t mentioned / orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call / it ORANGES. — Frank O’Hara

He folded himself from the corners inward / and then again in triangles. When the nurse came in / to check on him, he was gone, the sheets smooth / as a pond at first light. — Charlie O’Hay

You forget / the contours slowly, in / the long second leaving, / neutrality a structure / you learned to glamorize, / the way you have come to / imagine doors as rectangular. — Cindy Juyoung Ok

As anticipated as a commercial holiday. / It was always before / whatever was coming next. — Robert Okaji

He is not / a fragment, but a symptom / of light creeping across / the desert. — Robert Okaji

Listen. / The earth, too, considers you limitless. — Robert Okaji

oh, to be / that tongue / and palate, / those lips / surrounding you, / to be your / consonant / in a field of vowels. — Robert Okaji

What you call / home I call / diminishment. What you / surrender, I bundle / and mail to strangers. — Robert Okaji

Like flowers, / We did not know we were petals / Until only the last one remained. — Star Okpeh

My work is loving the world. / Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — / equal seekers of sweetness. — Mary Oliver

Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless; each arrives in an historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world’s willingness to receive it–indeed the world’s need of it–these never pass. — Mary Oliver

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. / It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift. — Mary Oliver

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things. — Mary Oliver

Poetry shouldn’t explain anything, particularly to those who demand explanations. — Dr. Omed

In the wavering balance of my feelings
set against each other
lascivious love and modesty
but I choose what I see
and submit my neck to the yoke;
I yield to the sweet yoke.

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In trutina mentis dubia
fluctuant contrarian
lascivus amor et pudicitia.
Sed eligo quod video,
collum iugo prebeo:
ad iugum tamen suave transeo.

— Carl Orff, “In Trutina,” from Camina Burana

Olim lacus colueram / olim pulcher exiteram, / dum cignus ego fueram. / Miser, miser! / Modo niger / et ustus fortiter.

Once I dwelt in the lakes, / once I was beautiful, / while I was a swan. / Miserable, miserable! / Now black / and burnt fiercely.

— Carl Orff, “Olim Lacus Colueram,” from Carmina Burana