Yusef Komunyakaa Quotes
It took me 14 years to write poems about Vietnam. I had never thought about writing about it, and in a way I had been systematically writing around it.
Quotes to Explore
-
Everybody is a hero in their own story if you just look.
-
Any musician - I would say 99% of musicians - needs some help along the way. Most people, even if they're self-produced, have someone else mix it, or they'll have someone else master the record. Inevitably, it's like somebody else's personality being put into your art.
-
When I was growing up, skateboarding was big and basketball was big.
-
Last Wednesday, I stupidly dropped my iPhone in the bath, and my life has sort of spiraled almost out of control.
-
With film, I have to be a team player; it's a whole different thing. I can't just be a one-man show. I have to learn how to use people to the best of their ability and motivate them to be as passionate about the project as I am.
-
In real life, I'm gorgeous, beautiful.
-
The Great War was a progressive revelation and disillusionment.
-
Actors are greedy. They can never be satisfied. I want praise as well as box office returns.
-
Unless you're Gisele, you wake up some days and feel ugly. When that happens, I accept that I'm not perfect and it's OK; I can start over again tomorrow.
-
I learned so much in Zimbabwe, in particular about the need for humility in our ambition to extend mental health care in countries where there were very few psychiatrists and where the local culture harboured very different views about mental illness and healing. These experiences have profoundly influenced my thinking.
-
My failures have been errors in judgment, not of intent.
-
When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?
-
I hate a man who always says 'yes' to me. When I say 'no' I like a man who also says 'no.'
-
Publishers vet books, and they do a good job keeping out the low quality. But they also miss some good quality.
-
I almost laughed about the Machiavellian plans of the presidents of the United States.
-
Control of a company does not carry with it the ability to control the price of its stock.
-
My most joy that I have is dancing.
-
It's a great feat for me to have broken my world record.
-
The hardest thing about writing, for me, is facing the blank page.
-
Find the best writers, pay them to write, and avoid typos at all costs.
-
I'm pretty fortunate that I'm in the films I'm in largely because the directors have asked me to be in them. I'd love to do more of them, but the writing and historical stuff I'll probably always do.
-
We were all so different, temperamentally from one another, it's impossible to believe that we were together for so long. The cast and crew. How could we be more different from one another? It's difficult to imagine. But something lovely came of it.
-
Recessions are hard on people, but they are not hard on art.
-
It took me 14 years to write poems about Vietnam. I had never thought about writing about it, and in a way I had been systematically writing around it.
