A Quote by Joan Larkin

People need what they think of as a poem to be read at their bar mitzvah, their wedding, a funeral, whatever. And people are looking for hope and inspiration. I understand that.

Joan Larkin

Quote Topics

Bar Bar Mitzvah Funeral Hope Inspiration Looking Mitzvah Need People Poem Read Think Understand Wedding Whatever

Quote Author

Joan Larkin
American - Poet
Born: 1939

When I celebrated my bar mitzvah, there was no cake. Today, there is no such thing as a bar mitzvah in the United States without a special cake. It can be even more complicated and expensive than a wedding cake, because bar-mitzvah cakes are often based on a particular theme.

Ron Ben-Israel

I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a bass player, a drummer, and my breath making the melody.

Robert Pinsky

Ironically, my rabbi was a bar mitzvah Nazi. So I got bar mitzvahed. And though I didn't want to, the theme of my bar mitzvah party was Madonna.

Billy Eichner

I don't remember much about my bar mitzvah. The only thing I remember - I killed! That's what I remembered. Nobody could follow me at my bar-mitzvah. It was over when I was done.

Andy Kindler

I grew up in a secular suburban Jewish household where we only observed the religion on very specific times like a funeral or a Bar Mitzvah.

Jesse Eisenberg

I suppose the nearest equivalent to a bar mitzvah in terms of emotional build-up would probably not even be one's wedding day, but one's coronation.

Maureen Lipman

I'm not a boy now. I'm a man, I hope. I hope I've had my artistic bar mitzvah somewhere.

Jeremy Piven

People need hope and inspiration desperately. But hope and inspiration are only sustained by work.

Tarana Burke

You know, you have to start with hope...you don't get anywhere in this country without hope. So it's a necessity. What Barack says is that people have to understand hope isn't just blind optimism. It isn't passive. It isn't just sitting there waiting for things to get better. Hope is the vision that you have to have. It's the inspiration that moves people into action...There are more people engaged in this political process in this year than we've seen in my lifetime. And it is all because of hope because people believe in the possibility of something unseen.

Michelle Obama

That room was not available, and the only other room had been booked for a Jewish bar mitzvah. I called the father and told him I needed the room and I would pay him to move the bar mitzvah to an adjoining room which was smaller.

Lew Wasserman

I think the biggest thing that I have to do is to remind people that poetry is there for us to turn to not only to remind us that we're not alone - for example, if we are grieving the loss of someone - but also to help us celebrate our joys. That's why so many people I know who've gotten married will have a poem read at the wedding.

Natasha Trethewey

I've written a book that hopefully will give people a sense of what [presidency] was like. I hope my friends read it and say, "Now I understand." I hope my detractors read it and say, "Well, I better understand."

George W. Bush

People really need to take time and read a book. You know? That’s my advice. You could read A New Slant on Life, you could read Dianetics. And I think if you really read it, you’ll understand it, but unless you do, you’ll speculate. And I think that’s a mistake to do that.

John Travolta

The number of people who read a poem is not as important as how the poem affects those who read it.

Derek Walcott

You are thirty minutes late." "Yes." "Would you be thirty minutes late to a wedding or a funeral?" "No." "Why not, pray tell?" "Well, if the funeral was mine I'd have to be on time. If the wedding was mine it would be my funeral.