“I don't think modesty is a very good virtue, if it is a virtue at all. A modest person will drop the modesty in a minute. It's a learned affectation.”
Quote collection
Thinking Quotes — page 1025 of 4756
“You can ask goodness in, show it how much you like it, make room for it. And it says, "Oh, I like this place, I think I'll stay here." Which is why people go into one house and say, "I want to take my shoes off." At another house, no matter how beautiful it is, they might say, "Hmm, I can't stay."”
“When I want to think about what would be the right thing to do, the fair thing to do, the wise thing to do, I can just think of my grandmother. I can always hear her say, "Now sister, you know what's right. Just do right!"”
“There are those who say that poets should use her and his art to change the world. I'd agree with that, but I think everybody should do that. I think the chef and the baker and the candlestick maker - I think everybody should be hoping to make it a better world.”
“I think all poems are commissioned. They just come to me without somebody outside commissioning them. The idea comes and I will live with them 'til I get it as close to what I mean. I've never been totally satisfied. I've come close a few times.”
“There is a lot of ignorance, and I don't mean intellectual ignorance. I mean people think that if you get something, it will take away from what I have. It's just ignorance.”
“My work is to be honest. My work is to try to think clearly, then have the courage to make sure that what I say is the truth.”
“Courage, I don't think anybody is born with courage. I think you may be born with a flair to braggadocio, you know. That's not courage.”
“I do hope that young men and women will start to think for themselves and start to take responsibility for their own thoughts.”
“I think we ought to give ourselves more time. We should be more patient with ourselves and with each other.”
“The subject of the poem usually dictates the rhythm or the rhyme and its form. Sometimes, when you finish the poem and you think the poem is finished, the poem says, "You're not finished with me yet," and you have to go back and revise, and you may have another poem altogether. It has its own life to live.”
“when you think you've got hold of a genius ... you can't be sure whether it's a spark of the divine fire or a mere flash in the pan.”
“Some of your teachers are actually closer in age to you than you think.”
“I think I've always had an activist stance, yet at the same time, the other side of me - and this is where some people just don't get it, or they'd prefer it if the work was a lot uglier, a lot louder - I have this personality where I just want to put something out that's a fact and then let you interpret it. It's almost as if you might barely notice it, you might walk right by it, but you have to pay attention.”
“I do not think you can find a reason for everything you make.”
“I do think the smaller-scale studio works have that incredible love of data crunching, whereas I would say the large-scale earthworks tend to be much more stripped-down. With the mappings, as connected as they are to a much more analytical idea, what's a map? And can I make a map about time? I think the first time was Hurricane Sandy, the flood plane; a moment in time, but indelibly marked on any of us who were in the city. Mapping time is something that I'm really interested in.”
“You can't control everything. You can't control how someone feels about you. Or what makes them tick. You can only control how you react, how you act, how you think and feel.”
“Tons of people want to see movies about women but they don't want to make them. I don't know why. I think that's insane because look at some of these big movies like Maleficent, they're huge. It's ridiculous. So, it is really hard but I'm determined to do something about that.”
“I think throughout my life I've had an appreciation for how all of these things have to come together in order to realize and then sustain change.”
“I think that language matters. I think that people who are in public life have an opportunity to help the public understand issues and understand the urgency of issues. And to that extent, I think it is important how issues are talked about.”