A Quote by James Arthur
I don't think I'd ever get any better as a poet if I didn't push myself, very deliberately, to grow. My best poems surprise me, as they should, but I fight them at every turn, possibly just because I'm stubborn.
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It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.
I prefer poems that occupy an imaginative sphere. When I lived in Cincinnati, I was occasionally referred to as an "Ohio Poet;" this made me uneasy, not only because I think of myself as a generally American poet but also because I like to think I write out of the country of my own mind.
When I started that's how I wrote because I didn't know any better. I was just like "I want to make music." Then there were all these things that I learned to get myself over certain humps, but I think it just comes down to: do I have something to say or not? If I'm feeling something I should try to get that out, and maybe it's not words, but trying to turn it into something.
On every job you do, you've got to raise your game. My ambition is to just get better and better every job you do - you should never stop trying to get better. You have to teach yourself new things - I don't think you necessarily learn them from other people because you have your own style of doing things, but hopefully you get better.
Before I was ever a poet, my father was writing poems about me, so it was a turning of the tables when I became a poet and started answering, speaking back to his poems in ways that I had not before.
Every single woman is amazing. Every time I get in the ring with any of them, they bring the best out of me, and they just keep making me better as champion.
I see myself as the best fighter in the world and that's because I have to. There can't be any other way. I can't go into a fight with the other names that are around my weight, who want the same as me, and not believe that I'm better than them.
I was never motivated by a contract. I was motivated by being the best. So I just compete against myself every day and push to get better.
I know that one of the things that I really did to push myself was to write more formal poems, so I could feel like I was more of a master of language than I had been before. That was challenging and gratifying in so many ways. Then with these new poems, I've gone back to free verse, because it would be easy to paint myself into a corner with form. I saw myself becoming more opaque with the formal poems than I wanted to be. It took me a long time to work back into free verse again. That was a challenge in itself. You're always having to push yourself.
I just want to do shows because you get to see, over all the seasons, the person grow, and you get to grow with the character. That transformation, for me, is what I love about my job. I get to learn about myself and challenge myself and grow with the character. For me, it's a whole process of learning and growing.
I don't think you're ever there. You never arrive, but if you do, you might as well quit because you're already there. Can't get any better. And as players, if you ever have that moment - you should never have that moment. You're always trying to get better.
Sometimes when people get success they forget about the people that pointed them there or championed them into this position. I pride myself on really understanding. I wouldn't even call it keeping it real. I just call it keeping it me. When they tell me, "You're doing what you're supposed to do," it makes me go ten times even harder, because I know that there are people on the sidelines and they're watching me. They're cheering for me. I want to be the best me I could possibly be when it comes to them.
I am very ambitious and have set goals for myself. I really don't keep a tab on what my contemporaries are doing. I want to push myself as an actress and don't want to get into the rat race. With every film, I want to grow as a person and an actress. The character I play needs to change me in real life.
I like to push people till I get the truth out of them. Get them drunk, or whatever. Then discover what they really think. Push them and push them and push them.
Every fight, every camp I learn about myself and I get better. But every fight I get better.
I worked with creative people who were very demanding of me, and they helped me reach performances that I never could have gotten on my own without being pushed and having trust in them. And so I know the best way to get the best performance of an actor, and that's not to coddle them or to baby them. It's to help them; it's to push them.
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