Reflection and Introspection Quotes

One does not read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks with hopes that it will grant him a career in engineering; he does so because poetry helps him see something in the world that he might not have seen before.

It's not what you go through, but how that experience affects you. For some people, it could be a near car crash that changes your life. For other people, it could take five years of going to prison for them to realize they need change in their life. So it's not really the experience but more how the experience affects you.

The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.

I was just 20 years old when I wrote Broken Arrow.

I feel like there's a lot of albums that are like 'woo! we're young, let's have fun' and there's a lot of albums that are abstract, with mature lyrics.

You have the right to kill me, but you don't have the right to judge me. That's life. There's nobility in that. There's focus. It's genuine. It's crystal and it's pure and it's available to everybody, so just shut your traps and put down your McDonalds, your vaccines, your Us Weekly, your TMZ and the rest of it.

The Derby experience had not been good for me and the way it finished left a very bad taste in my mouth so I questioned whether I wanted to go back into management.

I'm not going to tell a person how to think, don't believe in that. What I want to do, when I write these books, is just to say don't be so sure of yourself. Let me pull the carpet out from underneath you, and let's see if you can still find the footing.

I think it's very important to keep in the back of your mind: 'What if I'm wrong?'

Music has always been a dominant force in my life. As a young kid, it was a way for me to escape everyday life.

When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry.

2016 was really challenging for me. I don't know what it was.

Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur.

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.

Jacqueline Woodson's books are such a gift to parents and children for their poignant subtlety and lyricism and their willingness to let a reader dwell in the pangs of realization that we sometimes try to protect our children from.

I studied Paul Simon's 'Slip Slidin' Away' and 'Still Crazy After All These Years.' I wanted to explore adult themes, portraying the hurt that's in even a good relationship.

Few writers push the reader away with the coolness, dignity, and faint melancholy of Fleur Jaeggy.

When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1991, I asked him if he had any regrets, and he said no. I was a burnt-out litigation solicitor in my thirties, hating my life, and his cancer made me re-evaluate it all.

Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.

Filming 'The Road to Riches' was surprisingly difficult for me. I learned that going back to career successes and failures can be emotionally exhausting as you are forced to revisit the euphoric highs and painful lows in high speed.

Rachel Cusk's books are like pop-up volumes for grown-ups, the prose springing out of the page to bop you neatly between the eyes with its insights.

Music, for me, was something I did because I was disillusioned after the Cold War's end and did not know what I wanted in life.

I find great consolation in having a lot of poetry books around. I believe that writing poetry and reading it are deeply intertwined. I've always delighted in the company of the poets I've read.

I take inspiration from everything around me, also relationships and friends. And the inside of my crazy head.

I'm halfway through Patti Smith's memoir 'Just Kids,' which is heart-stoppingly vivid. It drips with beauty and hope and devastating candour. I don't want it to end.