Yusef Komunyakaa Quotes
I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems.
Quotes to Explore
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I grew up playing on unprepared surfaces where your wicket depended on quickly adapting to the bounce. As a kid, I could never differentiate off-spin from leg-spin. All I looked to do was to try to hit the ball before it pitched.
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The music comes through me, and I let it come the way it comes, and it shapes itself. I just hold space for it. I don't intend to write it for a purpose, but it comes as it comes and am proud of the way it can support change because I believe strongly in what I sing about.
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I don't believe in regret.
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I learned that the hardest party to pull off successfully is Saturday night dinner. This meal is expected to be elaborate: appetizers, first course, dinner, dessert, and coffee. People arrive at 7:30 or 8 p.m. and stay for hours - definitely past my bedtime - and they all go home exhausted.
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I am not ashamed of anything - not my past, not my affairs, not my body, and most definitely not my desire.
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Whenever societies do well, they believe that there is something in their cultural DNA that made it happen.
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The minute I put my leg on a horse and say, 'Come on, let's go,' I absolutely believe that the horse and I can do it and that we will do it. And I am always shocked when we actually don't do it. If the analytical mind ever overrode that optimist in me, I'd be in some serious trouble.
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I don't believe in a lot of schmoozing and buttering up. Not that you don't become friends in work. But I think it's a misconception that you have to do a lot of hanging before you work.
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See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I'm profoundly convinced that that's a total lie. I think people are different. Sardinians, for example, have stubby little fingers. Bosnians have short necks.
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If you believe that markets operate in Alan Greenspan fashion, then you don't inquire into the details.
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The past is open to all sorts of magical possibilities because it can't be verified. It's as we make it, so it seems to be entirely free. It seems to be completely up for grabs. But of course it's not.
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It's always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That's just in human relationships.
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The universe is always speaking to us... sending us little messages, causing coincidences and serendipities, reminding us to stop, to look around, to believe in something else, something more.
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You really want to get a headache? Try to understand Internet advertising.
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The study of history empowers nations and individuals with an ability to avoid errors of the past and lay foundations for victories in the future.
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I truly believe that everything Sci-fi taught me as a child about an efficient and wondrous world will be happening in my lifetime.
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I believe that pop culture is just, like, so ready for 'Watchmen.' We tried so hard to ride that wave between satire and reality, and all the things that make you still care about the character, but you don't miss the commentary about them.
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You are enough, which I believe is critical for any human being to get in their bones.
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Sometimes I have problems where I get into a mode where even just looking at a page on a screen makes me panic. And getting past that is a really intense thing to do.
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Because since the beginningless past we are running after objects, not knowing where our Self is, we lose track of the Original Mind and are tormented all the time by the threatening objective world, regarding it as good or bad, true or false, agreeable or disagreeable. We are thus slaves of things and circumstances.
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I know the greatness of Christianity; it is a past greatness.. I live in 1924, and the Christian venture is done.
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I'm not going to make my living out of beating my head against somebody else.
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I've wanted to be a comedian since I was a kid, and my parents were very supportive of that.
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I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems.
