Adrian Matejka Quotes
One of the hardest things for me to do is be fully open in a poem. By that I mean, honest and not trying to amplify some mythological version of myself. I was a poor, geeky black kid in Indianapolis. There is nothing mythological about that. So to try to truly render the kind of economic and racial inequity I grew up in, I had to find a way to be more honest about what happened. And it wasn't fun to write, even though the poems aren't 100% autobiographical.
Quotes to Explore
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I was the kid who never won the races. I never jumped the highest. I wasn't on the list of the high-achieving.
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If a script is good, you are 10 steps into the part just reading it. But my choices are not all down to my taste. It is about people you have worked with before.
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I think most writers, in a sense, have this desire to disappear, to be absolutely anonymous, to be removed in some way: that comes out of the need to be a writer.
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If sex is a pain in the ass, then you're doing it wrong.
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What I will remember most about Mr Mandela is that he was a man whose heart, soul and spirit could not be contained or restrained by racial and economic injustices, metal bars or the burden of hate and revenge.
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What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.
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Obviously, it was a very conscious decision not to go down the same route we'd travelled before. In retrospect I don't think OK Computer sounded that much different to The Bends but this one does - it's a lot more textural and unlike anything we've done before.
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I'm doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the experiment?
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To achieve great things you have first to believe it.
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I remember, I remember The fir-trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky; It was a childish ignorance, But now 't is little joy To know I'm farther off from heaven Than when I was a boy.
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God does not demand that I be successful. God demands that I be faithful. When facing God, results are not important. Faithfulness is what is important.
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I invented animals and birds – I had about two dozen. After working on them for six months, I sat down and just for fun wrote two dozen poems to accompany the drawings. It was for no one to every see, but a friend sent me in to an editor.
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My days are filled with work I love - reading poems, writing poems, talking with people about poems, teaching, directing a writing program, hosting readings, etc.
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Lilacs, False Blue, White, Purple, Colour of lilac, Your great puffs of flowers Are everywhere in this my New England ... Lilacs in dooryards Holding quiet conversation with an early moon; Lilacs watching a deserted house; ... Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom, You are everywhere.
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One of the hardest things for me to do is be fully open in a poem. By that I mean, honest and not trying to amplify some mythological version of myself. I was a poor, geeky black kid in Indianapolis. There is nothing mythological about that. So to try to truly render the kind of economic and racial inequity I grew up in, I had to find a way to be more honest about what happened. And it wasn't fun to write, even though the poems aren't 100% autobiographical.
