Eileen Myles Quotes
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I've had a lifelong waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop feeling when something good happens.
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I started writing poems, and when I first tried prose, I wrote bad articles and essays and columns, and I didn't have a handle on it. I didn't go to a school that really taught you how to write that stuff.
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Living in literature and love is the best thing there is. You're always home.
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Having big audiences when you're on a book tour is like Valhalla if you're a person who used to sell Girl Scout cookies on the side. Because you want to give the reading that will sell the most books.
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Evolution is not an even process. There are surges, and there are micromoments. Certainly a career as an artist is that way.
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The only job that ever really worked for me was teaching because you are your own master once you get into the room. You just have to show up on time and talk about what you care about.
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Lyndon Johnson, I know for a fact, was a great president. And I don't mean by that he was a great man.
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In Arlington, people would laugh at you if you tried to get people to look at your drawings or listen to your poetry. It was like you thought you were special.
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The most exciting thing is to read a poem out loud for the first time.
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Fred Moten is a poet I really love because he changes who is telling the poem all the time.
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I made myself into a poet because it was the first thing I really loved. It was an act of will.
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When we have relationships with animals, we often make up who they are.
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Somehow, the whole idea of me writing art reviews was just too much of a complicated thought, but I liked art, and later on I just realized that it would be perhaps a pleasure, and so I decided to do it for 'Art in America' - a lot.
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I was like the family clown. The middle child entertaining. I was a lousy student, but interestingly, the nuns always let me write plays or do drawings, endless special projects.
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I really just love reading. It's my favorite thing, performing my poems live. Reading by reading, I just kind of follow my nose.
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I love Canada, and I dated someone who was Canadian a few years ago, and she brought me into a deeper understanding of the greatness of the culture.
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I always aimed at being a legend.
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I didn't know how to write a novel, so I sort of let it happen in waves. The only way I could write it was to think like scenes in a movie.
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When somebody's in love with you, they think it's amazing you've written them a poem, and when they don't love you anymore, they hate those poems. They wish those poems would go away.
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Sunday is a likely day to write a poem. Because poetry is a piece of language flying around: you'll find notebooks, something on your phone. It's about finding them and getting them off that crumpled piece of paper and onto my computer.
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The poet is like the earth's shadow. The sun moves, and the poet writes something down.
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It's a big statement if you use the word 'America' in the title of your poem.
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Who doesn't want to be famous? I am famous. I'm dying to be on TV.
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I thought 'Chelsea Girls' was going to change my life.