Quotes About Struggle

Sometimes you have a poem that you really want to write and it never happens.

I have never written a play, a story, a poem, or my one film - anything - unless something was troubling me enough, wrecking me, in fact, to drive me back into the absurdity of writing. I do not enjoy writing.

If someone is alone reading my poems, I hope it would be like reading someone's notebook. A record. Of a place, beauty, difficulty. A familiar daily struggle.

As a friendly one. I would still like to write concrete poems, but I can only do it sometimes.

If you read Keats's poems, they're often full of doubts and anxieties. They can be quite tough.

The years rolled their brutal course down the hill of time. Still poor, my clothes still smelling of the horse barn, still writing those doubtful poems where too much emotion clashed with too many words.

As a public poet, people often don't see the reality of my life.

The poet's expression of joy conceals his despair at not having found the reality of joy.

I became an electrician after high school. But I always had this thing in me to write. But it was always a little shameful. To say you were a poet was saying you were kind of crazy, and I carried that around for a long time. I still kind of carry that. And I think it might be true, actually.

I'm really lucky in that I can do lots of different things. It must be really hard to just be a poet or just be a novelist - a constant cycle of effort and exhaustion and recuperation.

The attention one gets from being a poet isn't great.

I got out of Iowa all set to be a poet and a novelist, but you know what? It's really tough to make a living as a poet.

She was the Judy Garland of American poetry.

I despair of ever writing excellent poetry.

I'm inspired by the poets, so I'm always going to give in that direction, rather than in any other. It's the making of me... and also the downfall of me.

Obviously one of the things that poets from Northern Ireland and beyond - had to try to make sense of was what was happening on a day-to-day political level.

It's difficult to get films made, especially films about poets.

Writers, particularly poets, always feel exiled in some way - people who don't exactly feel at home, so they try to find a home in language.

Defeat furnishes good material to the poets and the artists, but none of us care to have the glory of the conquered apply to us.

My father would take me to auditions and put me in the room right in the corner because he was watching me; he couldn't get a babysitter. He'd be at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the LES until four in the morning, trying to tell his story and using his craft, but because he had a kid that didn't let him stop.

There comes a point in everybody's life where you either learn to handle things or you get handled.

'Mission: Impossible' is fun. But for myself as an artist, I'm really more concerned with the human condition, the human experience, especially from an African American point of view.

If you are asking for my point of view, I would say that the Palestinians should go back to Palestine.

It has been hard for me in a sense because from an industry point of view - I don't care if I'm from the 'X Factor;' I embrace the fact that I'm from the 'X Factor,' but other people don't embrace that.